"BEER WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS": MARKETING BEER UNDER MAO

ABSTRACT This essay explores the nationalization of beer in twentieth-century China. Using the theoretical framework of "culinary infrastructure," it shows how the physical facilities and technologies of brewing and marketing interacted with local drinking cultures to shape the understandings of beer in China. It begins by describing how a western consumer good originally marketed to colonial representatives was gradually adopted by the urban Chinese as a symbol of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century. It then reviews the nationalization of foreign-owned breweries and the growth of domestic production in the first decades of Communist rule. The essay concludes that the Chinese acquired a taste for beer as an everyday marker of urban privilege that survived Maoist radicalism and remains to this day a defining feature of Communist China.

摘要 本文探讨了20世纪中国啤酒的民族化进程。本文采用“饮食基础设施”（culinary infrastructure）这一理论框架，阐释了啤酒酿造与营销的实体设施及技术，如何与本土饮酒文化相互作用，进而塑造了中国人对啤酒的认知。本文首先阐述了这一原本面向殖民官员推广的西方消费品，如何在20世纪上半叶逐步被中国城市民众接纳为现代性的象征。随后，本文梳理了在共产党执政初期，外资啤酒厂的国有化进程以及国内啤酒生产的发展态势。本文最终得出结论：中国人养成了饮用啤酒的习惯，啤酒自此成为城市居民日常彰显身份特权的符号；这一文化现象历经毛泽东时代的激进社会变革仍得以存续，时至今日，仍是中华人民共和国的标志性特征之一。