Tsingtao is the beer most associated with China around the world and the country's most widely exported brand. It was founded in August 1903 as the Germania Brewery, owned by the Anglo-German Brewery Company, in Qingdao, then a German concession in Shandong. The brewery took the colonial spelling of the city's name, Tsingtau, later Tsingtao, and at first served a mostly European clientele.
The Anglo-German company did not survive the First World War: in 1914 the city and the brewery passed into Japanese hands. The new owners tried to market the beer to local consumers, but sales stayed low, because Chinese drinkers had not yet acquired a taste for beer.
Beer in a bag
Today Tsingtao is China's second best-selling beer, having been overtaken by Snow. In Qingdao, locals like to buy fresh Tsingtao draught beer straight from the brewery, carried home in open plastic bags.