A few years ago I took a tour through Tibet. At each restaurant, the waiter would always gave a choice between "local beer" and a slightly more expensive "Premium Blue Ribbon" beer. Most of the time they referred to the second choice as only "Premium Beer" or more often simply as "Blue Ribbon Beer". I usually tried the local beer which was always a one liter bottle of Lhasa Beer. Sometimes I would split the liter with a friend at dinner.
So at lunch one day after more than a week traveling around in Tibet -- I think it was the day after coming down the mountain from Rombuk and the Everest Base camp -- I decided to splurge the extra buck and find out what the premium blue ribbon beer was like. I was surprised when the waiter brought me a one liter bottle of this:
(Click the picture to see larger size and read the label)
Yes, there were only two choices of beer at the time and the premium beer choice was a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. In the U.S. we usually refer to this beer by the brand name "Pabst" or "PBR", and it is considered a cheap beer selection. However, the words "Blue Ribbon" on the label are more clearly readable and understandable so the locals had been referring to the brand name "Blue Ribbon".
I later read on Wikipedia that the Lhasa beer was a relatively recent commercial venture by the Chinese in cooperation with the European Carlsburg brewery. At the time, I did not know this and believed this just to be a cheap long-time local brand of beer.
Awesome!
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