TAIPEI,Taiwan - A letter from my Taiwanese friend, Dragon Shiang-Yu Chang:  “My dear friend. Yesterday I sent you eighteen little bottles of mahjong liquor by air mail. I hope you will receive it  in a few days.
“There are two kinds of bottles. The golden one is aged Kaoliang Liquor, which is very popular in Taiwan. The blue one is also Kaoliang Liquor, but for this, we use Deep Sea Water to make it. Deep Sea Water is 613 meter deep from the East coast of Taiwan.
"In the whole world there are just three places that have Deep Sea Water: Taiwan, Japan and Hawaii. In Japan, Deep Sea Water is used to make sake, a light liquor. In Hawaii, it is used to make drinking water. Only Taiwanese use it to make Kaoliang Liquor.”

Parcel

A couple of days later, the parcel arrives. Eighteen boxes, containing little bottles of liquor indeed. On top of the boxes, two mahjong tiles are depicted: the Dot One and the Green Dragon.
But why is it called mahjong liquor? Dragon Chang’s enthusiastic story makes it quite clear. The name of the liquor is Yi Tong Fa Cai (同发财). Yi Tong is the mahjong tile Dot, or Circles, One; Fa Cai is the Red Dragon (a tile on which often the Latin character F is engraved). “Combined this means: getting wealthy together”, Dragon explains. “And that is a very good Chinese wish.”

Story

Dragon tells the story of a 2003 mahjong game with Mrs. Shau, the wife of the vice-president of Taiwan.  “She sat next to me. I discarded the Dot One, and she discarded the Green Dragon. Mrs. Shau then announced Yi Tong Fa Cai: getting wealthy together.”
“I caught the word and decided to have it registered as a trademark in Taiwan and China. That was not so easy. It took seven years of court processing before I got the intellectual property right of Yi Tong Fa Cai.  But then I finally could develop the product.”
A friend of Dragon’s just had invested in deep see water in the Pacific, East of Taiwan. “That is water of a very high quality, and I thought it would be a good idea to use it for Kaoliang Liquor.”

Advisors

Dragon had a lot of advisors who helped him to develop the firewater. “We used many different percentages and many different tastes before we could decide which one was the best.” “The next step will be to develop Deep Sea Water Whisky.”

The kaoliang liquor comes in two varieties. The more  expensive one is made with deep sea water and is sold in blue bottles, ‘because the sea is blue’, the other one in gold bottles.  In Taiwanese duty free shops the 50 milliliter bottles are sold for 5.30 and 4.00 USD.

I do it for fun and to make money, says Dragon. “Drinking is good for the Yi Tong Fa Cai production, and liquor is good  for the market. One day, I hope to make a lot of money by selling mahjong Yi Tong Fa Cai spiritual. And then I will return it to mahjong by contributing to the mahjong culture and events. Just like Mr. Kyoichiru Noguchi did by founding the Mahjong Museum.”

Read also: Tasting and testing the Deep Sea Liquor