Thirst Come, Thirst Served

How do you get to our factory?" the voice on the line repeated my question with a laugh. "Just show the cabby a bottle of YANJING and say, 'Take me.'"

And so it was, down Twin Rivers Road beneath the bellies of incoming planes, where the billboards all urged yanjing and the air reeked of roasted barley. In Dublin, Guinness anchors a working neighborhood; Milwaukee's Miller shoulders freeways and a ballpark; and in Beijing I expected industriousness to spill from Yanjing's kegs into the streets. Our cab would follow ant lines of tricycles, one rolling in empty,...