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Nation
Nation
UPDATED: September 21, 2009 NO. 38 SEPTEMBER 24, 2009
Beer City
Shandong Province's Qingdao is becoming China's great beer city
By LI LI
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FILLING STATION: Tourists who make the trip to the Tsingtao Beer Museum in Qingdao can watch the brewery's beer packaging line in operation (WEI YAO)

Clive Chapman, a helicopter pilot trainer working in Hong Kong, is one of many foreigners who have gotten to know Qingdao City from drinking the beer with the similar name.

"The majority of Westerners in Hong Kong drink Tsingtao Beer and it is also my beer of choice," said Chapman, who traveled to Qingdao with his wife for the first time. He said it was interesting to learn at the museum how the brewery has developed in China.

The Chapmans said it was a pity that they missed Qingdao's two-week international beer festival, which concluded a few days before they arrived. The Qingdao festival, which is the largest of its kind in Asia, has opened on the second weekend of every August since 1991. A record 3.7 million tourists were attracted to Qingdao for this year's 19th Qingdao International Beer Festival. Visitors drank 1,065 tons of beer.

Beer feast

Beer lovers who missed the festival's bacchanal can make it up by spending a night at Qingdao's Beer Street on Dengzhou Road, where the museum is located.

The 1-km-long street, which was launched by the local government as "a non-stop beer festival," is home to around 60 bars and beer shops, all of which have large white tents to shade their outdoor bars. Residents recommend it as a place to find the freshest beer in town since these bars offer an unfiltered beer with yeast whose shelf date is only 24 hours.

"Our bar sells 800 liters of beer a day. We buy just enough beer from the brewery every day to make sure it can be sold out at the end of the night," said Wang Kun, a manager of a bar called The Birthplace of Beer Culture.

On afternoons when business is slow, people drink fresh beer sent to the bars from the brewery across the street while admiring the surrounding architecture that creates a European atmosphere. When Qingdao was a European colony, German architects and designers built dozens of structures in the dignified Gothic style of their homeland. Beer street was set up in the European quarter to give visitors a chance to enjoy the history of Qingdao.

The street turns much noisier and more boisterous at night, when people drink at barbeque banquets and eat seafood like beer-drenched clams. Several restaurants have outdoor bands that play for their patrons. Loud conversations, laughter and the music can be heard before people even step onto the street.

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