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106-476: Taiwan Beer ( Chinese : 台灣啤酒 ; pinyin : Táiwān Píjǐu , or 台啤 ; TáiPí ) is a brand of mass market beer brewed by the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation (TTL). The brand is an icon of Taiwanese culture and is applied to the best-selling beer in the country. The company known today as TTL has its origins in a government agency established by Taiwan's Japanese rulers in 1901. Initially,

212-547: A family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with

318-464: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where

424-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and

530-482: A wheat beer , Taiwan Beer Weissbier, was added to the lineup; it is 5% ABV, and is sold in brown 600ml bottles with white and bronze labels, and white 330ml cans with similar artwork. Further beverages marketed under the Taiwan Beer brand include stouts, "fruit beers" (mango, pineapple, grape and orange; 2.8% ABV), alcohol-free beers, and non-alcoholic flavoured beers. Amongst other new products, Taiwan Beer has launched

636-505: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and

742-460: A Hakka culture promotion centre. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of

848-595: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese

954-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of

1060-597: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of

1166-700: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only

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1272-545: A higher maltose content than "Classic", and therefore a smoother taste. It also uses a larger proportion of ponlai rice and aromatic hops, which give it "a fresh and clean aroma". "Gold Medal" is rated at 5% ABV. It is sold in green bottles, and in cans that reproduce the white, red, and green label seen on the bottle. Its more refined and rounded flavour was intended to appeal to younger drinkers. In May 2004, TTL hired 144 Taiwan Beer girls to promote it in restaurants and small pubs, and also in fashionable pubs and night clubs where

1378-564: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as

1484-423: A peak of 26% of the market. However, TTL's marketing strategies have since regained some of Taiwan Beer's market share. In the two decades leading up to the start of the 2010s, advertising for Taiwan Beer focused on its freshness; towards the end of that period, TTL also introduced several new beer styles, and a new logo, bottle design and commercial campaign for "Gold Medal", the brand's most popular style. During

1590-538: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate

1696-503: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin

1802-486: A surplus of locally produced rice that was suppressing prices and thus limiting the incomes of farmers. Adding rice to the brew also lowered production costs. In 1964, the Monopoly Bureau responded to an increase in demand for beer by cooperating with Dominion Breweries of New Zealand in learning, practising and adopting the patented brewing technique of continuous fermentation. In November 1965, Taiwan became part of

1908-610: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c.  1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct

2014-563: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than

2120-596: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which

2226-485: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,

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2332-414: Is designed to be sold freshly brewed, and is not often seen in stores, as it expires just 18 days after production. In 2008, Taiwan Beer began selling an amber malt brew bearing the "Mine" label. "Mine" bottles are green with white, gold and blue labels, and cans are white, gold and blue. The following year, the "Mine" brew was joined by "Mine Dark". Both "Mine" malts are 5% ABV. More recently, in 2013,

2438-527: Is made up of two large buildings, a red-brick one and a green-tiled one, flanked by a number of smaller wooden-framed and other structures. Inside the buildings, modern automated items of equipment, including stainless steel mash tuns , are in operation. The walls of the Taipei brewery are decorated with black-and-white photographs depicting earlier methods of production. The original copper mash tuns are no longer used, but remain in place as drawcards for tourists. In

2544-458: Is not a simple process. The pectin in the fruit juice must be removed, as it would increase the beer's viscosity and accelerate the process of oxidisation; pineapple juice must also be heated to destroy enzymes that would break down protein in the beer. The R&D team at the Wuri Brewery carried out many experiments with the temperature, humidity and pressure of subsequent processes to formulate

2650-673: Is now known as the Taipei Brewery. During the 1980s, an important new type of drinking establishment, the beerhouse, appeared in Taiwan. The first one opened in Taipei in 1983, and there were soon many more, in that city and others. Typically constructed in a log cabin -style, beerhouses appealed to the Taiwanese fascination for western culture. Patrons would hang out in beerhouses after work and late at night, drinking beer and eating local dishes, such as fried clams , fried crab legs and snails . However, beerhouses were also controversial, and by

2756-595: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of

2862-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate

2968-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles

3074-484: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,

3180-450: Is unpasteurised, and therefore retains the nutritional value of its yeast while also tasting fresher. It was introduced to the range in 2003, after visitors to Taiwan Beer breweries had commented favourably on the flavour, mouthfeel and smoothness of freshly brewed unpasteurised beer they had been permitted to sample during brewery tours. Rated at 5% ABV, it is sold in signature solid green bottles with no paper label, and also in green cans. It

3286-496: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

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3392-497: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for

3498-540: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it

3604-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while

3710-735: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system

3816-610: The Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in

3922-525: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in

4028-680: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with

4134-579: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and

4240-782: The T1 League under the name TaiwanBeer HeroBears , are sponsored by the brand. So too is the Taiwan Beer baseball team, which TTL established and operates in cooperation with the National Taiwan Sport University . The oldest industrial plant that produces the brand, the Jianguo Brewery complex in Taipei, is now more than a century old. It has been designated by the Taipei City Government as an historic site , for its historical and architectural value. The complex

4346-552: The World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002, and the government found itself under outside pressure to liberalise markets. At the start of that year, laws fully opening Taiwan's liquor market to competing products went into force, and the already reduced tariffs were eliminated. In July 2002, the Monopoly Bureau was corporatised and renamed Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation (TTL). That year, Chinese beers were permitted to be imported into Taiwan, and foreign beers reached

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4452-473: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c.  1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded

4558-591: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at

4664-452: The "Brew Lab" series "for refined tastes", the "Sweet Touch" series of fresh local fruit juices blended with beer/wine, and "Gold Medal Free", a non-alcoholic beer for drivers. The fruit beers were introduced after foreign brewers started building factories in Taiwan, a move that negated Taiwan Beer's hitherto competitive advantage of freshness in its local market. The initial idea was to create beer styles that included 'Taiwan flavours', being

4770-643: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Bank of Taiwan The Bank of Taiwan

4876-538: The 2000s, TTL also took steps to introduce Taiwan Beer to the Chinese market. Initially, its efforts to register the Taiwan Beer brand as a trademark were thwarted several times in reliance upon China's trademark law, which forbade the registration of a geographical name as part of a trademark. The necessary procedures for Taiwan Beer to be sold in China were finally completed in 2009, after several years of negotiations. Within two months, TTL started shipping Taiwan Beer to China;

4982-515: The 21st century, the four TTL breweries have become tourist attractions as well as factories. As of 2023, TTL had plans to transform the Taipei brewery into a beer culture district park; the Shanhua Brewery was offering taste tests of fruit beers; the Wuri Brewery was expected to become the site of a Taiwan Beer brand experience centre; and the Zhunan Brewery was already operating concurrently as

5088-715: The American forces pulled out of Vietnam, the Taiwanese American-style bar industry vanished. Meanwhile, the Monopoly Bureau constructed new breweries, in Wuri District , Taichung City , in 1966, and then in Shanhua District , Tainan , in 1973. To meet public demand, it introduced canned beer in 1975. Also in 1975, Taiwan Beer's brewery complex in Taipei was renamed as the Jianguo Brewery ( transl.  nation-building brewery ). It has since been renamed again, and

5194-555: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though

5300-518: The Monopoly Bureau of the Taiwan Governor's Office was responsible for all opium , salt , and camphor sold in Taiwan. In 1905, tobacco was added to the list of monopolised commodities and products. In 1907, the Japanese colonial government began taxing liquor producers to create a new revenue stream. The government then remodelled the whole of Taiwan's liquor industry, and set up much needed infrastructure and training. Subsequently, in 1919,

5406-427: The Monopoly Bureau, and corruption was reported to be rife. The Monopoly Bureau could rely upon a variety of excuses to revoke such a licence. During World War II , Allied airstrikes badly damaged Taiwan's liquor-producing facilities. Production was very substantially reduced. Meanwhile, in the early 1940s, matches, petroleum , and standard weights and measures also came under the Monopoly Bureau's authority. After

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5512-461: The Monopoly Bureau. At that time, however, Taiwan had a highly competitive market for imported Japanese beers, and importers successfully lobbied members of the Imperial Diet to spare beer from the monopoly program. Takasago Beer soon became very popular amongst Japanese drinkers in Taiwan, who preferred it to saké because it was a better thirst quencher during Taiwan's burdensome summers . With

5618-671: The ROC government (led by the Chinese Nationalist Party , or KMT) took over the Bank of Taiwan and began issuing Taiwan dollars , also known as Taiwan Nationalist Yuan , through the Bank of Taiwan. This currency is now referred to as the " old Taiwan dollar ." Severe inflation of this currency during the Chinese Civil War led the Bank of Taiwan to issue the New Taiwan dollar in 1949. After

5724-571: The Rest and Recuperation ( R&R ) program, under which US military personnel could take a short vacation in a number of places in Asia. From then until the program ended in April 1972, almost 250,000 Americans had a vacation in Taiwan. A new industry of American-style bars emerged on the island, and thousands of women were employed to serve beer and other alcoholic beverages, and otherwise entertain bar guests. Soon after

5830-803: The Taiwan Beer Bar, a brewpub in Taipei . Taiwan Beer is served cold and best complements Taiwanese and Japanese cuisine , especially seafood dishes such as sushi and sashimi . It has won international awards, including the Monde Selection many times since 1997, and the Brewing Industry International Awards in 2002. It has also been exported successfully to China, the United States, Japan, Korea, France, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Cambodia. Several lager-style brews bear

5936-476: The Takasago Malted Beer Company, developer and owner of Taiwan's first brewery, was established by Konosuke Abe and other investors, including figures from the Japanese wine industry, with a capital investment of two million Japanese yen . "Takasago" is the word that, since Japan's Edo period , had served as the customary Japanese name for Taiwan. The company's first brewery  [ zh ]

6042-587: The best methods of making the fruit beers, which have been much appreciated and generated positive reviews. Taiwan Beer is a national icon strongly identified with Taiwanese culture , and a symbol of local resilience and pride. During a trade dispute with the People's Republic of China in December 2022, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, Joseph Wu , even described it as "... the great taste of freedom". Another view of

6148-446: The brand had not previously been able to make much headway. Both of the first two lagers are mainstream styles also regularly seen in Taiwan's convenience and grocery stores. The brand has also introduced craft style lager brews. "Premium" is a 5% ABV European pale lager brewed at low temperature using 100% Munich malt . It is marketed in brown bottles with a gold and white label, and in gold and white cans. "18 Day Draft", unusually,

6254-403: The brand, as expressed by a Taiwanese private sector website, is: "Táiwān Píjǐu ( Taipi for short) represents a side of Taiwan that doesn’t make it into glossy tourist brochures and feel-good TV advertising. Taipi stands for the quotidian, the earthy, and the comfortable—it certainly isn’t high-falutin’ culture, but it is strongly identified with the real Taiwan, beyond the shiny skyscrapers of

6360-506: The capital or concerts of classical Chinese music." The brand's iconic status in Taiwan is reinforced by TTL marketing strategies. Advertisements have featured Taiwanese celebrities such as rock guitarist Wu Bai , who was appointed as the public face of Taiwan Beer in 1998, and diva A-Mei , who became a spokesmodel for the brand in 2006. Two basketball teams, one a Super Basketball League outfit named Taiwan Beer (popularly nicknamed 'The Brew Crew'), and another one, which competes in

6466-551: The departure of Japanese nationals, led to changes in consumer preferences, but initially demand for beer was not much affected. The Korean War (1950–1953) led to an intensification of the cooperation between the USA and the Chinese Nationalists. The USA funded several important aid programs in Taiwan between 1950 and 1965. Many American advisors and military personnel were stationed on the island during that period, especially after

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6572-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which

6678-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of

6784-558: The end of the decade enthusiasm for them had waned. In 1987 Taiwan lifted martial law and, under pressure from the US government, opened its beer market to foreign imports from America and Europe. Up to that point Taiwan Beer held 99% of the market. Not long after that year, imports from Japan and Southeast Asia were also permitted. However, the local brews were initially protected by high tariffs. In 1991–92, production of Taiwan Beer reached its absolute peak of 144 million bottles per annum, and in

6890-566: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by

6996-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable

7102-546: The flavours of agricultural products characteristic of the island, which is a leading fruit producer . TTL also hoped that fruit beers would be lighter, more refreshing, and would attract more female consumers. The fruits chosen included Irwin mangoes from Yujing District in Tainan, Golden Diamond pineapples from Guanmiao , also in Tainan, and Black Queen grapes from Erlin in Changhua County . The manufacture of fruit beer

7208-517: The following year, the corporation began brewing the product in Jiangsu Province . Taiwan Beer remains the island's best-selling beer brand and is one of the most recognised brands in Taiwan's business world. However, according to figures released by Taiwan's Ministry of Finance , its market share has dropped dramatically in recent years, from nearly 85% in 2009 to only 70% in 2015 and just 60% in 2019, in each case by volume. The best selling of

7314-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has

7420-550: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although

7526-404: The label Taiwan Beer. The original brew, now known as "Classic", is sold in brown bottles with a green and white label, and in white cans bearing a blue striped design with green lettering. A rough-and-ready concoction rated at 4.5% ABV , it is made to a recipe dating from the 1960s. The "Gold Medal" brew, which was introduced in April 2003 and became Taiwan Beer's top-selling style that year, has

7632-581: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into

7738-516: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses

7844-427: The latter year modern automated computer-controlled production and environmental protection equipment was installed at the Taipei Brewery. However, imported beers gradually increased their market share, and competition between them and Taiwan Beer became very intense. Taiwan entered its modern period of pluralistic democracy in the 1990s. Free trade and open markets became priorities as Taiwan prepared for admission to

7950-562: The local market monopoly regime, beer was expensive. Most Taiwanese had trouble finding enough food, and could not afford to drink beer, bottles of which were so costly that the asking price is known to have exceeded the price of pork. The company's business of selling costly beer boomed, and even the Bank of Taiwan chose to invest in it. The company also secured the support of the major Japanese breweries in obtaining raw materials. Merchants vied for local market distributors and vendors licences issued by

8056-701: The loss of mainland China in the Chinese Civil War by the KMT and its subsequent retreat to Taiwan, the Bank of Taiwan kept printing the island’s banknotes until the Central Bank of China assumed that role in 1961. The Bank of Taiwan was governed under the Taiwan Provincial Government until 1998 when governance was transferred to the ROC Finance Ministry. In 2001 the Central Bank of China took over

8162-435: The many styles of Taiwan Beer are amber lager beers brewed along pilsner lines. They have a distinct character and flavour, generated by the addition of locally produced ponlai rice to the malt during the fermentation process. The rice imparts both a smoothness and a sweetness, and has been said by one reviewer to add "... a certain umami and sake-like note not found in most Asian lagers." Like all mass market beers,

8268-517: The monopoly system, by forming the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau. Simultaneously, the number of monopolised items was reduced; from then onwards, only tobacco and alcohol remained, together with camphor until 1968. The sudden departure of Taiwan's Japanese brewers in 1945 led to a lack of brewing expertise on the island. The government therefore promptly sent some of its employees to Germany to study beer brewing. That decision may have led to

8374-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including

8480-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with

8586-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in

8692-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of

8798-654: The others being the Sapporo Brewery in Japan and the Tsingtao Brewery in China. In its early years, the brewery was operated by Japanese brew masters. Its product, an ale (as opposed to a lager ) first brewed in June 1920, was marketed as Takasago Beer (Chinese: 高砂麥酒 ), and was made in two styles, namely light malt and dark malt . The investors' original plan was to export the company's product, but its initial quality

8904-773: The popular styles of Taiwan Beer are filtered and pasteurised . They are mass-produced at four locations, namely the original Jianguo Brewery  [ zh ] in Taipei, the Shanhua Brewery  [ zh ] in Shanhua District, Tainan, the Wuri Brewery  [ zh ] in Wuri District, Taichung City, and the Zhunan Brewery  [ zh ] in Zhunan , Miaoli County . Some styles are also brewed on-site at

9010-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,

9116-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for

9222-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without

9328-419: The replacement of the island's thick, malty pre-World War II ales with the light, bright, crisp and sweet German-style lagers that have been brewed as Taiwan Beer ever since the brand's name change. In the late 1940s, after the Chinese Nationalists had lost the civil war in China, more than 800,000 of them retreated to Taiwan, where they came to account for around 10% of the population. That influx, combined with

9434-523: The signing of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1954, and their presence caused a beer sales boom. During the 1960s, domestically produced ponlai (or penglai) rice  [ zh ] ("Formosa rice" 蓬萊米 ) was added to Taiwan Beer's fermentation process, resulting in the distinctive local flavour for which the beer is known today. The recipe was altered not only to make the brew sweeter and less bitter, but also to absorb

9540-505: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by

9646-557: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language

9752-481: The support of a network of Takasago beer houses and advertising on billboards in Taiwan's major cities, Takasago Beer developed a big following in the 1920s. By 1925, it was Taiwan's leading brand of beer. Exports of the product to Tokyo began to rival Sapporo Beer , the leading Japanese brand. Eventually, in 1933, the local market beer monopoly was reintroduced, with effect from July of that year. Over 200 liquor industry businesses were shut down, and private brewing

9858-739: The task of issuing the New Taiwan Dollar. The Bank of Taiwan currently operates a total of 169 domestic branches as well as branches in Tokyo , Singapore , Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China . Branches have also been established in New York City , Los Angeles , London , and South Africa . In July 2007, the Bank of Taiwan merged with the Central Trust ( 中央信託局 ) as part of a government financial reform package. The bank continues to operate as an independent company taking over some aspects of

9964-609: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to

10070-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in

10176-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese

10282-562: The war, the incoming Chinese Nationalists set up the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Office, which preserved the monopoly system by establishing the "Taiwan Provincial Monopoly Bureau", and also took over the assets of the hitherto privately owned brewery. Takasago Beer was renamed Taiwan Beer in 1946. The following year, the Administrative Office's successor, the Taiwan Provincial Government , reorganised

10388-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until

10494-508: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with

10600-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,

10706-440: Was banned. The Monopoly Bureau began a practice of purchasing the local market products of Takasago Malted Beer Company in batches and then reselling them; the company also continued to export some of its products. Although by then its competitiveness in terms of productivity and quality had improved from its early days, the company was still a long way short of profitability, and relied upon the monopoly to cover its losses. Under

10812-558: Was erected in the then Kamihito District of Taipei. It was built using the same type of bricks as those of the nearby Governor-General's office (now the Presidential Office Building ); most of its equipment had been acquired second hand from an old brewery in Hawaii. Upon completion, it was more than 13,000 m (140,000 sq ft) in area (about the size of a football field), and was one of only three beer breweries in Asia,

10918-433: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half

11024-402: Was inferior to that of Japanese beers, and early export results were unsatisfactory. The company therefore decided to enjoy tax exemptions by selling Takasago Beer locally; beer was not yet then covered by any monopoly in Taiwan. In 1922, under the influence of a post-World War I depression , the government attempted to nationalise the liquor industry by placing it under the exclusive control of

11130-538: Was relieved with assistance from the Bank of Japan . Bank branches were created in other parts of Asia as the Japanese empire expanded, including areas in China and Southeast Asia . By 1929, the Bank of Taiwan had a total 14 offices outside of Japan and its colonies, fewer than the Yokohama Specie Bank or Bank of Chōsen but more than any other Japanese commercial bank. After the Japanese surrender in 1945,

11236-701: Was the main issuer of banknotes on the island from 1899 to 1961, when that role was taken over by the Central Bank of China . Having lost its former role as a bank of issue , it remains owned by the Government of the Republic of China . The Bank of Taiwan's creation was authorized in 1897 by the Bank Act of Taiwan which also encouraged Japanese enterprises, such as the Mitsubishi and Mitsui Groups, to invest in Taiwan. It started operations in 1899. A financial crisis in 1927

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