Rượu đế

Rượu đế is a distilled liquor from Vietnam, made of either glutinous or non-glutinous rice.

Those who paid a special fee were given a sign emblazoned with the letters "RA" (an abbreviation for "Régie d'Alcool") to hang in front of their store, which gave them the privilege to be able to sell alcohol from the Société Française des Distilleries de l'Indochine, which was a diluted distilled alcoholic beverage made from rice and corn.

Whenever such individuals saw the tax collector, they would bring their alcohol and hide it in a field overgrown with đế plants.

Although the exact etymology of the latter term is unclear, its component words translate literally as follows: rượu=liquor; quốc=nation, state; and lủi=to slip away.

The third theory states that the term was created to distinguish this liquor from rượu quốc doanh (literally "state enterprise alcohol"); the government in northern Vietnam under communist rule prior to đổi mới in the 1980s had a monopoly on liquor production, so this illegally produced alcohol is similar to American moonshine—again highlighting the theme of secrecy.