The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
August 2004 - Qingdao Beer Festival
The beautiful Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, home of Tsingtao Beer, plays host to the annual Qingdao Beer Festival, now in its 14th year running. What better excuse than that to mount a full scale Beer Expedition and indulge in excessive alcohol intake!
The Qingdao Beer Festival, I'm told, is the second largest event of this kind in the world after Munich. But China being China, it obviously is quite different. The beer tastes the same, but everything else feels distinctly Chinese. The snacks on offer range from chicken feet to fish balls to something remotely related to a pizza. The crowd is 99% Chinese, the entertainment is mostly karaoke and some silly games which none of us understood but we still played along.
In fact, this was my second visit to the infamous beer festival, after an inaugural trip in 2000, which saw my face on the front of the local newspaper next morning (not in the "most wanted" section, I'd like to add - see Qingdao 2000). While I do not remember much from the first trip (for obvious reasons), the smell of the toilets did stick to my long-term memory and I can confirm that it has not improved in the intermittent years.
For this year's Beer Expedition, we had assembled an excellent crew of hard-core beer connoisseurs, including the three survivors of the Liechtenstein Princely Navy's infamous Operation Nightcrawler II.
We established base at the Qingdao Shangri-La, and after a short excursion into town and a peculiar meal that involved heavy farting and burping from the neighboring table (this is China after all), we headed straight for the International Beer City. While some of the major global beer brands have their own party tents outdoors, Tsingtao beer occupies a large hall full of non-stop karaoke action. We sang a rending of "Let It Be" and judging from the crowd's reaction, that's probably what they thought of our singing. We then restricted ourselves to drinking beer.
While these tough sailors enjoyed the darkness of their hotel room for most of the day, Mei and I engaged in some local spying activity by scouting out the various tourist attractions. Qingdao, as a former German colony, sports a number of well preserved Bavarian-style castles, houses and churches that make you think you're right in the Schwarzwald. Compared to other Chinese cities, Qingdao is also feels quite laid-back and reasonably clean - aside from the typical Chinese gray-in-gray sky. There are nice street-side 'cafes' where the locals play cards and drink beer straight from the keg. The other funny thing is the people you see walking around with plastic bags (!!) full of beer. I guess that's a more economical way of buying booze.
We started off day two at the Beer Festival by checking out the large theme park that is part of International Beer City. Feeling adventurous, three us decided to go for the roller coaster and after about half an hour in the queue, all the operators decided to have dinner, which stopped all operation for another thirty minutes. While hordes of people were waiting in line, the staff patiently enjoyed their food and drinks! Only in China!
Thereafter it was beer, beer and more beer, some silly games, more beer, some small fireworks, more beer, the occasional detour to the toilet (yuck!), more beer, and probably more beer, but I'm not sure, since my memory fails me.
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