I
Although I'm not a good drinker, drinking a little wine still happens from time to time. Perhaps it is because of "the lesser of the two evils", I prefer beer among all kinds of alcohol. Among all kinds of beer, I especially like Tsingtao beer.
I became attached to Tsingtao Brewery, which originated from an unsuccessful but warm experience of having a small drink. In the winter of 1976, I finished jumping the queue and was recruited to a small shipyard on the coast of Laizhou Bay. Two Qingdao educated youths who get along well with me enthusiastically took leave to accompany me to report to the factory. When I arrived at the factory, I realized that it was so small and small, and I felt a sense of loss and desolation. My two companions seemed to read my mind and advised me that it was always a good thing to get a job, which was worth celebrating. After the newspaper reported it, they insisted on inviting me to dinner and dragged me to the only small state-owned restaurant in town. When ordering wine, the two guys were pleasantly surprised to find that there was Tsingtao beer in this small shop. I remember it was one of those small brown bottles, which cost about thirty cents a bottle. Happy, they decided to drink beer for this meal.
When I was a middle school student in Jinan, I often saw some adults squatting on the side of the road with bare arms and drinking the brown beer with a bowl of coarse porcelain. I was very curious. Unfortunately, the control at home is very strict, and I am even more cash-strapped. I have never had a chance to taste that thing and see what it tastes like. As soon as I graduated from middle school, I went to the countryside to jump the queue. After going to the countryside, I only occasionally join in the fun with the villagers to drink a few mouthfuls of white wine. The villagers are not interested in beer, and a few people who have tasted it agree that it smells like horse urine.
I don't know much about it, and because of the price, I'm not in favor of drinking beer. At that time, a bottle of white dry wine was only sixty or seventy cents, and the price of two small bottles of beer was just as high as that of a bottle of white wine, and one bottle of white wine was enough for the three of us. According to them, beer has a low degree and tastes almost like water. Some people in Qingdao call beer "beer water", so how many bottles do we have to drink?
I can't hold them together. Besides, people are kind enough to pay for a treat, so I have to obey the majority. When the wine was slowly poured into the glass cup, the golden and pure wine body and white and delicate foam shone with warm luster under the light, which gave me a comfortable and warm feeling at once, even though it was in the middle of winter. After drinking the first glass of wine, a faint fragrance mixed with a little lingering bitterness surged from Ran Ran in the abdomen, and there was a tingling sensation in my mouth. They looked at me fixedly and asked me expectantly how I felt. I said it was ok. They were very happy and told me a lot about Tsingtao beer. For example, German production technology, Australian hops, Canadian barley, Laoshan mineral water and so on. From that moment on, I began to be attracted by Tsingtao beer.
Between a cup and a change, they kept encouraging me not to lose heart, saying that as long as I worked hard, I could still go back to the big city if I had the opportunity to join the army and go to college in the future, and sincerely welcomed me to work in Qingdao in the future. We frequently toasted the beautiful expectation of meeting again in Qingdao and drinking Tsingtao beer in the future, and my mood gradually improved.
You propose a toast to me, and I propose a toast to you. After a while, ten bottles of wine fell into my stomach. When we went to ask for wine again when we were in high spirits and slightly drunk, the waiter said that Tsingtao beer was a scarce commodity, and it was rationed. Ten bottles came from the store and we drank them all. Fortunately, the local people don't recognize beer, otherwise it would have been sold out.
2
Some people think that Tsingtao beer is more deadly and energetic, so they don't like Tsingtao beer very much. As everyone knows, this is the unique feature of authentic Tsingtao beer.
in the summer of 1986, our unit organized an academic seminar in Qingdao, where I served. Some famous professors and scholars were invited to attend the meeting. One of them, a professor from a famous school in the province, often participated in the activities organized by our unit, so he was familiar with me. One night at dinner, his old gentleman mysteriously said to me, "Xiao Wang, be sure to come to my room after you are busy at night!" " I asked him what he wanted, but he kept it a secret: "You will know when you come."
By the time I got to his room after finishing my business at the meeting, it was already past nine o'clock, and he was waiting for me without locking the door. After I opened the door, I saw the old gentleman lying on the bed with his legs crossed, holding a beer bottle in one hand and reading a book in the other. Seeing me come in, the old man rushed out of bed and said apologetically to me, "Look, look, I'm sorry!" I see you've been busy all day, and I wanted to treat you with an authentic Tsingtao beer. It's all because I'm worthless. You didn't come for a while, so I was left with only one bottle! "
It turns out that the old gentleman had a student who worked in Tsingtao Brewery. When he heard that the teacher was coming, he sent him a box of export Tsingtao beer in twelve small bottles. The old gentleman thought it was precious and invited me to share it with him. The old gentleman likes drinking beer at ordinary times, so he waits for me while reading a book while drinking wine as tea. One to two, two hours later, that box of beer was almost finished by him. While I was drinking the remaining bottle of beer, the old gentleman said to me unhurriedly, "Only Tsingtao beer, which is slightly bitter, is the real beer flavor. Other brands of beer are sour and unsmiling, so it is not strictly beer."
besides, there is another thing related to Tsingtao beer that is quite interesting. That year, I went to Western Europe with a group for training. When I was in Vienna, Austria, one night, a companion insisted on taking me to experience the feeling of a pub.
We came to a pub near our residence. There were no guests in it, only a chubby boss-in-law, who was staring blankly at the counter. We told the boss-in-law in blunt English that we wanted to drink "Bill". When the boss-in-law met the guests, she immediately came to life and enthusiastically recommended several "Bills" to us in the same blunt English, such as Munich, Frankfurt and Frankfurt. We said, "Who doesn't say my hometown is good?" Our words fooled the proprietress into thinking that she couldn't find the north. She burst out laughing with a bright mouth. In a happy mood, another person gave us an extra bottle of "Vienna Bill" and said that she knew that China had "Qingdao Bill" and "Qingdao Bill" was also "very good". After listening to the boss's words, we were very excited, so we invited her to drink to "Vienna Bill" and "Qingdao Bill". She was so happy that she laughed again.
3
Nowadays, the days when Tsingtao beer was a commodity in short supply have become a memory. Since the 199s, Tsingtao Brewery Group has started to buy and merge breweries around the world. More than half of the breweries in Shandong, large and small, have changed their families and taken refuge in the "Tiger Mountain".
The fly in the ointment is that although the products of these merged breweries are labeled with Tsingtao Brewery and even produced according to Tsingtao Brewery's technological process, their inherent deficiencies in raw materials, water quality, etc. are still difficult to make up in a short time. Tsingtao beer seems to be in short supply in another sense.
There is a small brewery I am familiar with, which has transformed itself in the tide of merger and has become one of the descendants of Tsingtao Brewery Group. The XX brand beer originally produced by this factory, despite the hype, was not bought by local consumers, who jokingly called it "one bottle down", meaning that you don't need much to drink this kind of beer, and one bottle is sure to get drunk.
Tsingtao Brewery has left me a lot of tender memories, so I miss the original Tsingtao Brewery very much. I also hope that those brands merged by Tsingtao Brewery will be all right without the trademark of Tsingtao Brewery, even if it is difficult to be exactly the same as the authentic Tsingtao Brewery, at least they will be close. People like nostalgia because there are some beautiful things in the past worth remembering. If you are obsessed with a certain product or brand in the past, it can only prove that their similar products are not good enough now.
It's a pity that after I came to work in the provincial government and had more business trips to Qingdao, I inquired about the whereabouts of the two guys who encouraged me to fall in love with Tsingtao beer many times. I was looking forward to drinking Tsingtao beer with them and making up for the old friendship, but I never got what I wanted.
Recently, my unit organized a physical examination, and some of my indicators were on the high side. The doctor urged me to give up drinking, especially to bid farewell to beer and liquor. Liquor doesn't matter. I didn't touch it originally, but it's really hard for me to say goodbye to beer, especially draft beer!