Go Global, Drink Local

Go to any local convenience store in Beijing, and you will find at least two baskets outside.  One contains Yanjing beer and the other holds Artic Ocean soft drink bottles.  These two staples of the Beijing diet are found everywhere in the city and are a must for any visitor trying to sample the “local” cuisine.  I am going to be very blunt; there isn’t anything special about the taste of these two drinks.  Yanjing tastes like every other mass-produced Chinese beer.  If you gave me a blind taste test of Harbin, Snow, Yanjing, and Qingdao, I honestly could not tell the difference between any of them.  Arctic Ocean tastes like Fanta…..In fact, I am pretty sure the Chinese company that makes it stole the Fanta recipe and now bottles the formula under the label, Arctic Ocean. 

Despite the homogeneity and unoriginality of these drinks, they are cornerstones of Chinese culture in the capital.  A trip to any Chinese restaurant in the hutongs would be incomplete without seeing someone’s table littered with a graveyard of Yanjing and/or Arctic Ocean bottles.  I once saw two people put down seven Arctic Oceans in one sitting.  Chinese people that I hang out with usually always have the same response when I walk into a store and buy an Arctic Ocean.  “How do you know what that is?”  I usually have to hold my smart-ass comments to myself at this point; especially considering almost every store in Beijing carries them.  They usually always add, “That is so Beijing,” after I explain that everywhere carries Arctic Ocean, and I would have to be completely oblivious not to notice it.

This semi-scripted discussion really embodies one of the interesting things about China.  It expects to hide its secrets in the open.  I think many foreigners like living here because of this, including myself.  Locals expect foreigners to overlook local items for established, global brands, and this says much more about the foreigners than the locals.  So the next time you are in Beijing, kickback with a Yanjing.  You’ll cringe when you take that first sip, but remember that it gets easier the more you drink.