Famed liquor's history reflects the New China

I remember when I was a kid there was an empty bottle in our home, colorful and mysterious. It was the mid-1980s in Albania and I had absolutely no idea what the bottle had contained before it ended up as a decorative item. When asked, my parents told me that we got it from my grandfather, but they wouldn't elaborate.

At that time, Albania was an isolated country and the relations with China were icy, so my parents wouldn't give any details about the bottle, fearing that as a kid I would talk to other kids, and they would talk with their parents, and problems will come along - a foreign drink bottle in our home? Big trouble.

The next time I had such a bottle in my hands again was in 2012 when I arrived in Beijing and had dinner with friends. So I had the chance to ask what was it, what was written on the label and what did the bottle have inside?