9,000 Years of Beer in China

Barley beer 5,000 years ago, a Russian brewery in Harbin, a German one in Qingdao, and today the biggest beer market on Earth. The history of beer in China is longer and stranger than most people imagine.

Before beer was beer

At Jiahu, in Henan, in central China, pottery around 9,000 years old held residues of a fermented drink made from rice, honey and fruit. It is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks known anywhere in the world. It was not beer as we know it, but it shows how early people in China learned to ferment grain.

The brewery of Mijiaya

In 2016, researchers analysing pottery from the Neolithic site of Mijiaya, in Shaanxi, found the residues of a beer brewed around 5,000 years ago. The vessels included funnels, pots and stoves: a complete brewing kit. The beer was made from barley, broomcorn millet, Job's tears and tubers, a mix of grains from western Asia and from China.

The discovery pushed back the arrival of barley in central China by about 1,000 years, and suggested that barley may have first come to China for beer, not for bread.

Beer disappears, rice wine rises

Ancient Chinese texts mention a sweet drink made from sprouted grain, 醴 (lǐ), which some scholars compare to a light beer. But over the centuries, Chinese brewers turned to qu, the mould starter that turns grain into sugar and alcohol at the same time. Rice and millet wines made with qu became the great grain drinks of China, and barley beer faded from history.

The modern return

Modern brewing with malted barley and hops returned at the start of the 20th century, with foreigners in China's port and railway cities:

• **1900, Harbin:** a Russian entrepreneur founded a brewery in the north-eastern city, then full of Russian railway workers. It is considered China's oldest beer brand.
• **1903, Qingdao:** a company of British and German investors founded the Germania Brewery in the German concession on the coast of Shandong, the ancestor of Tsingtao. Its German-style lager was brewed with water from nearby Laoshan.

Other breweries followed in Shanghai and other treaty ports. For decades, beer remained a drink of the cities.

A drink for everyone

In the second half of the century, beer spread across the country. Every province built its own brewery, and local lagers became part of everyday life: big bottles on the table, jugs at street stalls, beer with every summer meal. By the early 2000s, China had overtaken the United States as the largest beer market in the world.

Today

Today, the market is led by a few giant brewers, while a young craft scene in Beijing, Shanghai and beyond is rediscovering local ingredients. In a way, it closes the circle: 5,000 years after Mijiaya, Chinese brewers are again mixing barley with grains and flavours from their own land.

In one sentence

China brewed barley beer 5,000 years ago, forgot it for millennia, and has become the biggest beer country on Earth.