Chinese beer festival has German roots

Music. Tourists. Traditional food. Long tables crammed inside huge tents. And beer — lots and lots of beer.

It is not Oktoberfest. It is the Qingdao International Beer Festival, China’s largest celebration of lager.

If the festival looks like a certain German tradition, there is a good reason. The city of Qingdao is home to the similarly pronounced Tsingtao Brewery, which was founded by German settlers in this corner of Shandong province more than a century ago.

Since the festival started in 1991, the crowds have steadily increased. This summer’s celebration, which ran for much of August, drew nearly 40,000 people on its busiest weekends.

A small army of bartenders and servers kept steins full and glasses clean and at the ready.

In addition to Tsingtao, foreign producers like Budweiser and Carlsberg set up their own tents. Inside, the scene was raucous: Performers lip-synced to patriotic Chinese songs, women in skimpy outfits auctioned off traditional Chinese calligraphy, and more than one man felt the need to remove his shirt.

Locals come to enjoy the “re nao” atmosphere, a Mandarin term for “hustle and bustle” or “loud and chaotic.”

Qingdao’s festival may be of fairly recent vintage, but its beer-making tradition goes back more than 100 years.

At the turn of the last century, the city was a German naval outpost. The Germans brought beer and an architectural style that can still be seen in the buildings of the city’s Old Town.

The British who arrived later were suspicious of the local water and turned to drinking beer instead. In 1903, British and German settlers created the Anglo-German Brewing Co. and began producing Tsingtao.

Through two world wars, foreign occupations and civil war, the brewery changed hands several times.

Tsingtao was nationalized in 1949, and despite the purges, starvation and displacement that accompanied the Cultural Revolution, it never stopped producing beer.

“Without beer, we don’t have life in Qingdao,” said Zhao Chen, a local who brought his extended family to the festival. For an audience of young and old, electric floats circled the grounds at sunset.

In addition to all that beer, there was plenty of food at the festival.

Attendees had their fill of chicken’s feet, sausage, dumplings and grilled skewers of spiced meat and squid.

At night, the scene became even louder and livelier, as patriotic anthems turned to techno and rock.

Deafening music and the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke did little to dampen spirits as festivalgoers toasted one another from giant glasses.

Amid the never-ending toasts, I asked Chen whether he came to the festival every year.

“Are you kidding? This is more important than Chinese New Year,” he said, before sending his brother off to order us all another round.