Hot water
Plain hot water is an everyday drink. Trains, stations and offices have hot water taps, and many people carry a flask. In restaurants, water often comes warm unless you ask for it cold.
Life in Mainland China
Drinks in China, beyond tea
Hot water from the tap, soy milk at breakfast, a tea shop on every corner, and at a banquet, a toast.
Play: What's in the cup?Soy milk
Freshly ground and boiled soy milk is a breakfast drink, sweet or savoury, often with fried dough sticks to dip.
Milk tea and tea shops
Tea shops line the shopping streets: milk tea with tapioca pearls, fruit teas, and tea with a cap of salty cheese foam, ordered with exact levels of sugar and ice.
Sour plum drink
Smoked plums simmered with hawthorn, liquorice and rock sugar, served cold. A summer drink and a favourite with hotpot.
Salty milk tea
On the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, brick tea is boiled with milk and salt, and drunk through the day.
Butter tea
On the Tibetan plateau, tea is churned with yak butter and salt for warmth and energy at altitude.
Coffee and beer
Coffee shops have spread fast in the cities, and Yunnan grows almost all of China's coffee. China is also one of the world's largest beer markets; the best-known brands go back to brewers of the early 1900s in Harbin and Qingdao, and light lagers are served with almost every kind of meal.
Baijiu, yellow wine and toasting
Grain spirits and rice wines have been made in China for thousands of years and have a set place at banquets, weddings and business dinners.
Baijiu
A clear spirit distilled from sorghum and other grains, usually 40 to 60 percent alcohol, drunk in small cups at banquets. It is grouped by aroma: strong aroma, like Sichuan's Wuliangye; sauce aroma, like Guizhou's Moutai; light aroma, like Shanxi's Fenjiu; and rice aroma from Guilin.
Yellow wine
Rice wine brewed and aged in clay jars, amber in colour. Shaoxing's is drunk warm and used in cooking; it is the wine in Dongpo pork.
At a banquet the host makes the first toast, and guests then toast the host and each other, often going round the table. The word for a toast means "dry the cup", and the custom is to drink it off, though a sip is common too. Glasses touch with the rim lower than an elder's or the host's. Tea, juice or a soft drink can be raised instead of alcohol, and people do.
Play
What's in the cup?
Hot water, plums, beer, baijiu and butter tea.
In many restaurants, what comes to the table if you ask for water?
Answer
Warm or hot water. Often warm or hot water. Ask for it cold or iced if you prefer it.
Where does most of China's coffee grow?
Answer
Yunnan. Yunnan, which grows most of China's coffee, mainly around Pu'er and Baoshan.
What is the sour plum drink made from?
Answer
Smoked plums, hawthorn and rock sugar. Smoked plums simmered with hawthorn and rock sugar, then chilled.
Baijiu is usually distilled from which grain?
Answer
Sorghum. Sorghum, often with other grains such as wheat, rice and corn.
Moutai, Wuliangye and Fenjiu are grouped by what?
Answer
Aroma. Aroma: sauce aroma (Moutai), strong aroma (Wuliangye) and light aroma (Fenjiu), among others.
In a toast, why might someone hold their glass lower than yours when they clink?
Answer
To show respect. Touching with the rim lower than the other person's glass shows respect, often to an elder or a host.
Which drink is churned with yak butter and salt?
Answer
Tibetan butter tea. Tibetan butter tea, drunk many times a day on the plateau.
Which city has brewed Tsingtao beer since 1903?
Answer
Qingdao. Qingdao, in Shandong, where the brewery was founded in 1903. Harbin's beer is older, from 1900.