Shangri La Beer

History

With the support of the government, Shangri-La City's first beer brewery was founded in 2009 by Songtsen Gyalzur. The initial investment was expanded in 2013, and formal production began in June 2015. The brewery was established in an intact cultural and natural environment in cooperation with Swiss and German beer experts. In order to meet the annual needs of China's growing domestic craft beer market, the brewery management decided to expand the production line and began building a new brewery in Shangri-La Industrial Park in 2013. The Shangri-La Highland Craft Brewery aspires to quality by applying the German beer brewing purity laws or Reinheitsgebot, in order to maintain high quality requirements.

Shangri-La Beer's CEO, Songtsen Gyalzur, was born and raised in Switzerland. His mother was an orphan who moved to Germany and began her studies after her adoption by a young German doctor couple. At the age of 36, she finally had to chance to return to her hometown in Tibet, and established its first orphanage "Tendol Gyalzur Children's Charity". Since then, she has been caring for many children in need of assistance. Seeing his mother's hard work and persistence, Songtsen Gyalzur opted to give up his real estate company in Switzerland and returned home to Shangri-La City to assist his mother with the orphanage. Using his business experience, he started a business in his hometown Shangri-La City in order to support his mother's project and solve the employment issue of the young people who grew up at the orphanage. Songtsen Gyalzur established the Shangri-La Highland Craft Brewery, which not only solves the problem of unemployment among the young people from the orphanage, but also supports local agricultural development. 80% of the brewery's employees are the people who were raised at the orphanage. Part of the company's proceeds are donated to the orphanages' daily operations, and a highland barley planting base of 583000 square meters was established locally.

Location

The Shangri-La Highland Craft Brewery is located on the Tibetan plateau at 3300 meters above sea level, in the city of Shangri-La. Shangri-La is called in Tibetan Gyalthang or Gyaitang, which is reputedly the Valley of the Blue Moon and means "Royal plains". This ancient name is reflected in the Tibetan Pinyin name of the town of Jiantang (建塘; Jiàntáng), the county seat. Due to its location on 3300 meters above sea level, it not only boasts a breathtaking scenery, but is also home to China's cleanest air, purest mountain spring water, and organic Tibetan highland barley, which is an essential part of traditional Tibetan cuisine. In the second half of the 20th century, Shangri-La City was called Zhongdian (Chinese: 中甸 Zhōngdiàn), but was renamed Shangri-La on December 17, 2001 after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area.

Shangri-La Beer Visitors Centre

The Visitors Centre of Shangri-La Highland Craft Brewery is located at Qingkou Industrial Zone, 674400 Zhongdian, Yunnan, China, approximately 10 km outside of Shangri-La City. Guided tours (English, Chinese, German) including a beer tasting are offered.

City partnership between Arosa and Shangri-La City

Through the initiative of the Shangri-La Highland Craft Brewery, the tourist resort city of Arosa in Switzerland and Shangri-La City in China signed a formal friendship city relationship agreement in Arosa in 2012. In this way, the aim of the partnership is to strengthen the relationship of the two cities and learn from each other to foster a common development. Shangri-La Highland Craft Brewery became the first mutual project of the sister-city partnership by means of the successful research and development of highland barley used as a raw material to brew craft beer. On the day of Shangri-La Beer brewery's opening ceremony, the Swiss ambassador to China as well as a delegation from the Arosa government attended to congratulate all parties involved.

Awards