The story
Zhang Bishi established the winery in Yantai in 1892. He bought 2,000 plants from the United States, but few bore fruit and were not sweet enough. As well, half of the vines rotted away before harvest, so he bought 640,000 more from Europe. Even these plants found difficulty growing in the foreign Chinese soil that only 20 to 30% of them survived.
In order to save the venture, Zhang sent for and brought back wild plants from northeast China, plants that produced a bitter fruit. They were grafted to the foreign plants and, after three years, they were planted in the Shandong vineyards. The new vines survived, granting fruit rich in sugar with good color and were insect, disease, and cold resistant.
Zhang Bishi's nephew Zhang Chengqing was the company's first general manager.
From Wikipedia’s article on Changyu, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4