I asked for “huo jiu” and they looked at me like I was on crack, I tried to explain it to them still “put down the pipe” look and I haven’t seen it at my local Watson’s or any other I’ve been to around town. Maybe I’m not looking in the right section. Thank you all so much on the Spray starch help!!!
Try 酒精 ‘jiu3 jing1’… should do the job.
isn’t rubbing alcohol isopropyl alcohol? babel turned up 異丙醇 for this.
I thought it was Kao Liang Jiu.
I think “jiuJING” is what you want. It just means “alcohol” but given the context (hopefully a pharmacy?? or Watson’s, something like that) they aren’t going to assume you want Beaujolais Nouveau, after all. 
I don’t think you would be understood by most folks if you go whole-hog with “isopropyl alcohol” in Chinese. First, you’re a foreigner, so naturally you just wouldn’t know a word like that (which means they won’t understand it, even if you’re right) and second, usually that sort of term is only used by chemists and the like, not average people. I once asked for “Guoyang Hua QING” which technically AFAIK means hydrogen peroxide, but there’s a MUCH simpler term for it, as I quickly found out. (At least he figured out what I wanted.) You can tell I spend more time reading technical books than interacting with actual people. 
jiu jing is “essence of alcohol”