Harbin

China's oldest beer brand, most tellings agree, was born in 1900 in Harbin — the far-northeastern city that shares its name, better known abroad for its winter ice festival than for lager. Across China's northeast, 'Hapi,' as locals call it, is the hometown pour.

The origin is pure railway history: Harbin at the turn of the century was the hub of the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway, full of engineers and laborers a long way from home, and the brewery was set up to keep them supplied. That is why China's oldest beer town sits closer to Vladivostok than to Beijing, with Russian architecture still lining its old main street.

A century later the brand set off a very different contest: in 2004 the world's brewing giants fought a rare bidding war for Harbin Brewery, and Anheuser-Busch won. Under AB InBev it now travels wherever Chinese food culture goes — equally at home at a minus-twenty-degrees ice festival and a midnight barbecue table.

Very pale gold with a loose white head, light rice-and-grain sweetness, and soft carbonation — a lager built to be drunk in quantity alongside food. Northeastern China pairs it with chuan'r, cumin-dusted barbecue skewers, where its faint sweetness cools the spice. Low bitterness, light body, zero argument.