Soju refers to all kinds of transparent and colorless distilled liquor, commonly known as white wine, and there are other nicknames in various places, such as white dry, old white dry, burning knife wine, cooking pot wine, steamed wine, dew wine, dew wine and dew drop wine.

Soju originated in the Tang Dynasty and gradually became popular after the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Li Shizhen, a pharmacologist in the Ming Dynasty, described the making method of shochu as follows: "The method is to steam strong liquor and distiller's grains into retort, make the gas rise, and take wine drops with a container. All rancid wine can be steamed and burned ... It is as clear as water and has a very strong taste. " When did shochu start in minority areas? There is no exact record. At the latest in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, ethnic minorities in remote mountainous areas had mastered the technology of distilled liquor. By the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the brewing technology of soju of ethnic minorities had reached a very high level, which was comparable to that of the Central Plains. In Yuanmou Basin, central Yunnan, "All the people in the valley are rice. The grains are still often produced, but sorghum is the most important. There are two kinds of sorghum, and the sticky one is wine dew, which can compete with alcohol, and the name is Minnan. " In the same period, Nantian Liquor in Kunming and Huatong Liquor in Wuding. Heqing wine in Dali, "its taste is more mellow than Fenjiu." Since the Qing Dynasty, the brewing technology of shochu has been rapidly popularized among ethnic minorities. So far, there are only a few ethnic groups who can't master the brewing technology of soju.