Qingdao International Beer Festival IT is common at Qingdao Beer City to see a group of Chinese drink happily together with a group of foreigners. Even without a common language, beer can make boundaries disappear. This August, Tsingtao Beer has become the universal language at the beer city for the diverse clientele. Tsingtao Beer most popular “These are our new foreign friends. Although I do not understand a word they said, we are now brothers after sharing a bottle of Tsingtao Beer,” said Liu Pengchen at the beer city. He and his three best friends are now friends with two foreign young men. They drank and laughed together with reddening faces. “The Tsingtao Beer area is the most popular area. We had waited a long time to get a table and found the two were still waiting, so we invited them to join us,” said Liu. Liu is a born-and-raised Qingdao local. “I poured a glass of beer for them and told them to drink through body language. They understood immediately and we started drinking. Beer is our common language. You don’t have to say one more word. Everything is in the beer,” Liu said. The two foreigners repeated the Chinese phrase meaning “Tsingtao Beer rocks” throughout the evening. Americans’ gathering “I had tried Tsingtao Beer before I came to China. It is one of my favorite beers. When I first arrived in Qingdao, I smelt it immediately,” said an American surnamed Hamilton, who was drinking with a group of his countrymen at beer city. “We are from different parts of America and did not know each other. It was too difficult to find a seat at the Tsingtao Beer venue, so we sat together to enjoy the beer,” Hamilton said. Hamilton came to Qingdao to attend the International Sailing Week and came to the beer festival with his colleagues. “We love Tsingtao Beer and we decided to come next year,” he said. Another American from New Orleans is a beer lover and came to the city specifically to enjoy Tsingtao Beer. “My girlfriend and I love the beer here and we want to come more often in the future,” he said. Seats booked out From Aug. 13 to 23, visitors drank more than 300 tons of Tsingtao Beer, accounting for more than half of the beer drunk by visitors at the beer city. More than 10,000 visitors came to the place every day. “There were more than 2,000 seats at the place and they were full all the time. Visitors had to queue up for hours to find a seat. Many asked us to have a bigger place next year,” a Tsingtao Beer manager said. Meanwhile, the place also held a series of activities to introduce beer making. (Wang Yuanyuan, Chen Yong) Qingdao Intl. Beer Festival IT was first launched in 1991 and is a national celebratory activity featuring tourism, culture, recreation and trade. The 16-day event opens on the first Saturday of every mid-August. It is now the country’s largest alcohol carnival with a high reputation and big influence. During the festival, the city is decorated and every resident becomes part of the celebration. The beer city with world-class recreation facilities becomes a fun land. Since 2006, the festival has been heralded as one of China’s Top 10 Festival Celebrations for five years in a row. It has also won several national awards during the past 20 years. In 2011, it became the first of the Top 10 China’s Brand Celebrations. ??(Wang Yuanyuan, Qing Bao) | 