As was noted in the introduction to this site pijiu is the Chinese word for beer as written using the Pinyin (romanised) system for writing Chinese characters. During a year spent living in Changchun in Northeast China (1991) I became very partial to the local beer. This may have had something to do with how cheap it was to buy (one of the first Chinese words I learnt was the one for crate), but I would like to think it had a lot to do with the fact that the beer experience in China was a very varied and exciting one.

Given that most, if not all, of the non-imported beer in China is lager, one might expect a degree of consistency, but this was definitely not the case eleven years ago. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was to buy a couple of crates of the 'wrong' beer for a party. It all stemmed from confusion over two very similar named beers and my extremely poor grasp of Mandarin. In most cases one might expect this to be a forgivable mistake, but sadly in this instance it wasn't. The beer was undrinkable. As with much of the undrinkable beer I sampled while I lived there it was clearly made using water from one of the luminous green rivers one sees all too many of.

By selling their beer for a couple of pennies less than some of their competitors, sewage breweries did appear to have a market share, at least in Changchun anyway, but for every nasty beer there was a very good one. This is not wholly surprising given the German influence on brewing practices in China. Qingdao beer, aka Tsingtao beer, which is the most widely known Chinese beer abroad was developed in breweries built by the German community in Qingdao. I enjoyed the variety and appreciated the choice. Unfortunately when I returned to China recently the big Western breweries had begun to take over the Chinese beer market despite their pricey beers and their often inferior flavours. I have no idea how extensive their market control is now. They could for all I know have already driven the smaller breweries out of business, but where there is hope there is the pijiu quest...

The pijiu quest was originally envisaged as a research project looking at the state of the Chinese beer market and trying to raise the profile of whatever nice local beers were found to remain. I would still like to do this and will be returning to China in order to find out what I can. In the meantime however, it is blatantly obvious that others are far better placed to tell me what is going on in China and if anyone out there is feeling helpful please feel free to email me. Instead, I intend initially to focus my attention on matters closer to home.