Tsingtao Brewery Co.,Ltd. is China’s second largest brewery. It was founded in 1903 by German settlers and now claims about 15% of domestic market share. The beer is produced in Qingdao in Shandong province (and more recently in other breweries owned by the company as well), and it gets its name from the old Ecole francaise d’Extreme-Orient transliteration of the city’s name. The beer’s present-day logo displays an image of Zhan Qiao, a famous pier on Qingdao’s southern shore.

The Tsingtao Brewery was founded by The Anglo-German Brewery Co. Ltd., an English-German joint stock company based in Hong Kong who owned it until 1916. The brewery was founded on August 15, 1903 as the Germania-Brauerei (Germania Brewery) with a paid-in capital of 400,000 Mexican silver dollars divided into 4,000 shares priced at $100 each.