WHEN he gets drunk on Moutai, farmer Xiao Guangfu often recalls the sleepless nights he had more than a decade ago when he was so poor that he considered taking his daughter out of school.

“Life is much easier now,” says Xiao’s 80-year-old father. “See, we can even drink Moutai.”

Moutai, a distilled white spirit produced in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, has long been regarded as a luxury, a symbol of status.

Xiao, 46, lives in Pipa village of Maotai Town in Zunyi City, the hometown of the liquor where even the air is perfumed with the aroma from the brewery. But 10 years ago, he never even dreamed of having a sip of Moutai.

Back then Xiao was growing rice, as villagers in Pipa had been doing for generations. They fed their cows with the straw from the rice fields and used the cows for farming.

His wife worked in a shoe factory in Guangdong Province. The total income of the family for the year was just a few thousand yuan, and they used the money to raise two children and fund their schooling.

In 2002, Xiao started to build a family home. But his money ran out after the ground floor was finished and the project was put on hold.

In 2006, when farmland in Pipa village became the sorghum base for Kweichow Moutai Group, the company asked them to grow sorghum for the brewery.

“I didn’t want to change to sorghum,” Xiao says. “The water level in my rice field was at my waist. It was difficult to change it to dry farmland. And without the rice straw, I could no longer feed my cattle.”

Reluctantly, he sold his cow for 4,000 yuan (US$575), using the money to buy a rotary cultivator.

“In the first year, we could not drain all the water and the yield per mu (0.16 acre) was 300 kilograms,” he says. But he sold the grain to the Moutai group for 3,000 yuan — double the income he had earned growing rice.

Lives changed by Moutai

Moutai group gives farmers fertilizer made from the distillers’ grains at half price. It also subsidizes farmers’ costs for biological pesticides.

The yield of Xiao’s farmland grows every year. Last year, the yield per mu was 400 kilograms; this year it reached 450 kilograms. Prices are rising as well: Moutai group offers 7.2 yuan per kilogram of sorghum — twice the market price.

The second year after Xiao began growing sorghum, he asked his wife to return from Guangdong and in 2009 he finally completed his two-story home.

The next year he replaced his black-and-white television with an LCD TV.

During the Spring Festival of 2012, he bought his first bottle of Moutai. Now he often visits the pubs in the township with friends.

“I tried some foreign wines as well, but nothing can compare with Moutai,” he says.

Like Xiao, more than 1,000 households in the village saw their lives changed by Moutai. About 90 percent of the villagers have pulled down their dried brick houses and replaced them with modern buildings.

In China, Moutai has become synonymous for liquor. Moutai, or Maotai in pinyin, literally means straw stage.

Centuries ago, ancestors of the Gelo ethnic group set up stages of straw by the Chishui River, giving name to the township.

Moutai liquor is made with water from the Chishui and the drink won a gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Expo.

In 1935, the Red Army crossed the Chishui River in Maotai Town. Soldiers who suffered from diarrhea and rheumatism happily used the liquor as a medicine.

It has been named China’s national liquor and is used on many important official occasions.

Sun Chen, a guide in the Kweichow Moutai Group’s liquor museum, told Xinhua that the logo of the liquor used to be five stars.

“The highly political logo was later replaced by flying apsaras from the frescoes of the Dunhuang Caves, for the purpose of export,” Sun says.

“There were tales that fairies brought the wine to the world,” he says.

Moutai has always been popular in China. Top shelf bottles once sold for 2,000 yuan each.

Now, more than a third of the township’s 20,000 people are involved in the liquor industry.

Moutai Group has more than 20,000 workers. Chen Yong, a civil servant with the township government, said his uncle and aunt are both retired from the group.

“Their children are now working in the liquor factory,” he says. “Their work is hard. In summer they work in heat as high as 40 degrees Celsius, but the money is good.”

His cousins earn up to 120,000 yuan a year — four times Chen’s salary.

In the town there are also more than 300 small liquor factories. Each year they collect distillers’ grains from Moutai to make liquor.

“The tax from Moutai accounts for more than two-thirds of the total revenue for the town,” Chen says.

To accelerate local development, more villages were incorporated into Maotai township. Xiong Dengfa is from the Baiyang village, which once belonged to Erhe town.

“The road was bad here,” he says. “After the village became part of Maotai, construction sped up. With better roads, it is easier for us to send out our products.”

However, the development of Moutai has been anything but smooth.

Maotai Town transforming

Four years ago, China’s government released the “Eight-point Rules” to curb extravagance and improve officials’ work style, ordering austerity at official meals. Officials were no longer frequently getting drunk on the liquor, and sales of Moutai were heavily affected, with the price of a bottle falling to 900 yuan.

“Once a luxury, Moutai saw its price become more sensible, so even ordinary people can afford it now,” Chen says.

Meanwhile, Maotai Town is transforming.

The market near the factory is now full of ancient-style streets and buildings selling liquor and souvenirs. The museum opened to the public in 1997, and as many as 100,000 visitors — five times its population — visit the town during the weeklong May Day holiday.

While people across China flood to Maotai Town, Xiao Guangfu wants to get out.

His daughter graduated from a university in Chongqing and is the headmistress of a school now. She booked a tour to the Thailand earlier this year.

“I planned to go with her, but it was the harvest season and I had to stay for farming,” he says. “Some of the villagers have been to Singapore. I wish to go there as well. Now that I have no more demands from life here, it is time to go farther.”