[Beijing Diary] We Might End Up Eating Beijing Rice

Recently, heavy rainfalls have become frequent in Beijing, China. The bright sky quickly turns into dark clouds, and rain accompanied by thunder and lightning pours down like a torrent. Sometimes, a puzzling scene unfolds where sunlight shines through the sky in the background.

Not long ago, I had an evening appointment in Haidian District, about 15 km away from Wangjing in Chaoyang District. When I was about to leave, the rain was so heavy that more than half of the car tires were submerged. I was worried about whether I should turn back midway. However, after some hesitation, I pressed on and arrived in Haidian District, where the sky was clear and blue, and nothing seemed amiss. The driver said, "It seems like it either didn't rain here or only a little."

On that day, Fengtai District in Beijing recorded 39.9 mm of rainfall per hour, ranking first nationwide in hourly precipitation. As such events become more frequent, there is even a joke that rice farming will soon be possible in Beijing, a city known for its dryness, and that people will be eating rice grown there.

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Beijing was originally known as a city where it rarely rained even in summer. Thanks to this, even when daytime temperatures soared and heatwaves prevailed, the shade was quite comfortable and cool, making it bearable. However, recently, the frequent heavy rains have brought humid and sweltering heat typical of southern regions as a daily reality.

This climate change is bad news for some companies. A prime example is beer companies that expected a sharp rebound in sales due to events like the Olympics and the UEFA European Football Championship. In the case of Budweiser, sales volume in the Chinese market for the single quarter of the second quarter this year decreased by 10.3%, and revenue dropped by 15.2%. The company explained, "Our major markets, Fujian and Guangdong provinces, experienced continuous heavy rain," adding, "This kind of weather negatively affected our business."

According to China’s Yicai Global, the performance of the Chinese beer industry in the first half of this year worsened compared to previous years. From January to June, the cumulative beer production of designated large-scale enterprises in China was 19,088,000 liters, showing only a 0.1% increase compared to the previous year. Overall, the industry barely maintained the usual level, but monthly figures show that beer production has been declining continuously since March compared to the previous year. April saw a 6.5% decrease, May 9.1%, and June 4.5%.

Central and southern China have been suffering from continuous heavy rain for a month, causing widespread damage. In the first half of this year alone, 230 people lost their lives or went missing due to disasters caused by heavy rain in China, and the number of displaced persons exceeded 14.3 million. It is not something to just blame on abnormal weather.