Kweichow Moutai is beating China’s covid hangover

are a fact of life in “zero-covid” China. One in September in Chengdu, a south-western city of 20m, stopped locals from visiting tea houses, a favourite pastime. In Sanya, an island-resort town, tens of thousands of tourists were kept off the white-sand beaches in August. In Guiyang, another large south-western provincial capital, it was the boozing that suffered. Apart from forcibly confining almost 6m residents to their homes for most of last month, the authorities shut more than 50 shops owned by Kweichow Moutai, a distiller of a fiery, sorghum-based liquor. And it happened right in the middle of the year’s busiest shopping season, when tourists flock to the cool, mountainous region to sample local varieties of the firewater.Guiyangese and visiting tipplers were no doubt upset—all the more so for being unable to drown their irritation. For Kweichow Moutai, the episode barely registered. The devastating lockdown in its home province notwithstanding, on October 16th the company reported net profits of 44bn yuan ($6.2bn) in the first nine months of 2022, 19% more than in the same period last year and its best performance in a while.