We really want to enjoy the Qingdao International Beer Festival. We tried to take it on Saturday night and found it a little disappointing. According to the DK Guide, China only started brewing beer about a hundred years ago, but it is now the world's largest producer. China likes lager. If you're headed to the festival, you'd better, too. Tent after tent featured the same pale yellow brew. Though we love lager, we were expecting more variety. The other problem with the beer festival is that none of the tents offer small cups. It isn't set up for sampling. We wanted to try lots of different beers, but we only tasted two. The first was called Liberty, and it was absolutely terrible. Worse than flat PBR. Worse than Coors Light. Beer-flavored water. We're not sure where it was produced. The script on the tent looked Cyrillic, but what do we know. Either way, if this stuff is being sold around the world as "Liberty", it's no wonder the terrorists hate freedom. After the Liberty mistake, we made our way over to the Qingdao (that is, Tsingtao) tent. We narrowly escaped being served lemon and strawberry beer. Instead we ordered Tsingtao Black. It tastes like a lovin' spoonful of Maxwell House dropped in a lager. It's pretty good. After that, we chickened out. We were worried about being burned by Liberty Beer or its ilk, so we stayed in the Tsingtao area for most of the rest of our brief time at the festival. We listened to a local hair band sing what sounded like "Sweet Child o'Mine" in Mandarin. They were great. Four guitars and drums. Rock & Roll is alive and well and living in China, people. We had a good time, but we were left wondering if this is all there is. The festival will continue for a few more weeks, so we still have time to figure out what all the fuss is about. Maybe we'll try to latch on to a larger group of seasoned imbibers. If anybody out there has any suggestions or recommendations regarding appreciation of this fine festival, please send them our way.