We're in the middle of a heat wave here in Beijing, and there's nothing so refreshing as kicking back with a cold one. So it's not exactly welcome news to learn that 95% of China's domestically-produced beer contains formaldehyde, much of it exceeding the national standard of 0.2ppm by a factor of six.

This is not entirely a new revelation, however. Two years ago the Shenzhen-based company that produces Kingway beer started advertising that its product was the first domestic beer to be formaldehyde-free, which led other brewers claim to have dropped formaldehyde years before. This may be true for major breweries, but for the vast majority of local Chinese beers, formaldehyde is a low-cost way to improve the color and shorten the brewing time of cheap beer.

According to the Global Times investigation, brewers' claims of being "formaldehyde-free" usually only applies a few of their products. An industry insider says, "Upper-shelf beers don't use formaldehyde, but for the one- or two-kuai beers there's no choice but to add formaldehyde, since costs can't be kept down otherwise." The article also goes to the man-on-the-street, in this case a taxi driver who drinks two bottles a day, for the public's reaction: "It's depraved, what they're doing."

Going to classier establishments is not going to save you, either. The Beijing News reports that the same 7-mao beer that sells for one or two kuai on the street is being repackaged and sold to bars and karaoke parlors as Corona, Budweiser, or Heineken.

So, anyone for some baijiu?

Update: The 95% figure may be an out-of-date exaggeration, according to a report in the 11 July Legal Mirror. The article quotes a representative of the China Brewers Association calling it "impossible," since such a figure would include beer produced for export, and no foreign country has rejected Chinese beer for formaldehyde content.

Also in the Mirror is the story of a wedding photo studio whose portraits contained four times the legal amount of formaldehyde. When customers hung the portraits on their walls, the pungent odor caused fainting, splitting headaches, and vomiting.