Reason to live: beer in Shanghai, cont.

Now that I have spent 24 hours in America, where every product is available every place all the time, this observation seems pathetic, but: this was what I was excited about the day I left Shanghai.

The best news I have heard on the globalization front in a long, long time is that into the sea of indistinguishable, flavorless, soulless, depressing Tiger, Chinese-Suntory, Chinese-Carlsberg, Qingdao, REEB, and the rest of the sorry lot will soon arrive.... good beer. Great beer! Rogue Dead Guy Ale!

Brooklyn East India Pale Ale! North Coast Real Seal and Acme California Pale Ale! The full lineup is here, and the press release here. I suppose it's one more sign of how relative desires and satisfactions are, once you move above the pure subsistence level. Here in the U.S., some time in the next ten days I will pass a display case of these products without thinking hard about it. But in my expat life such comforts are precious indeed. Now I also have a vivid reminder, in terms that happen to matter to me, of what people have been telling me all along in China: that every month, practically every week, something new has become available that would have been hard to envision the month before. And in realms even more important than, gasp, beer.