Beer in China

Mainstream beer

Five Chinese brands dominate the mainstream lager market:

• Tsingtao (青岛啤酒) — the export-famous lager, brewed in Qingdao. Light, drinkable, the most internationally recognised Chinese beer.
• Snow (雪花) — by volume the biggest-selling beer in the world. Pale, light, mass-market.
• Yanjing (燕京) — Beijing's lager.
• Harbin (哈尔滨) — northeastern; one of the older Chinese breweries.
• Pearl River (珠江) — Guangdong.

All run 3–5% ABV in the standard line; light, restaurant-friendly, ¥6–¥15 for a 500ml bottle in restaurants, ¥4–¥8 from a supermarket.

The international brands

Budweiser, Carlsberg, Heineken, Corona are widely available in cities. Suntory and Asahi as imports.

Craft beer

The Chinese craft beer scene exploded between 2014 and 2020 and has settled into a substantial subculture in tier-1 cities:

• Beijing: Jing-A Brewing, Slow Boat Brewery, Great Leap Brewing.
• Shanghai: Boxing Cat, Liquid Laundry, the Dr Beer venues.
• Shenzhen: Pernicious, Bionic Brew.
• Hong Kong: Yardley Brothers, Black Kite, Heroes Beer Co.
• Chengdu: Harvest Brewing, the Beer Nest.

Most cities now have a craft beer bar (or several), and the mainstream supermarket chains stock a few craft selections.

Drinking culture

• Restaurants: beer is the standard accompaniment to most cuisines except formal banquets (where baijiu rules).
• Pubs: Western-style pubs concentrated in expat zones (Sanlitun in Beijing, French Concession in Shanghai, Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong).
• Tsingtao on tap from a plastic bag is a Qingdao-only tradition — you order draught beer at the brewery, it's poured into a thick plastic bag with a drinking-straw hole, you walk away with it.

With food

Lighter Chinese beers pair well with most Chinese cuisines. The mass-market lagers are deliberately low-impact next to spicy Sichuan or Hunan food. For Cantonese banquets, beer is the casual choice; Shaoxing rice wine the formal one.

Tsingtao Beer Festival

Mid-August, Qingdao. International-scale beer festival with the historic Tsingtao Brewery as the centrepiece. Worth a trip for beer enthusiasts. Train from Beijing 3h, Shanghai 5h.