Kingway Brewery

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New year, new places to explore. Today I headed to the former Kingway Brewery site in Luohu to see how it has been preserved and regenerated. Having visited and lived in China for a few years, I have never heard of Kingway Beer before. I've read that it was a leading beer manufacturer in China, but it must not be up there with the likes of Tsingtao or Harbin, or I have just never opened my eyes enough to see it (that's probably the right conclusion). The brewery site has been transformed into a cultural platform for art and design exhibitions. It was about a five minute walk from Tai'an subway station and I hadn't read up much about the site so didn't really know what to expect. Since it was a holiday, it was quite busy, but not overcrowded.

I worked my way methodically through the brewery site from front to back. I started at the Vista Tower, which I think had been where the old water tower had stood. The tower had several floors and I wandered up the stairs taking in the views from the different levels in each direction. The surrounding neighbourhood looked pretty new as there was a nice looking mall right next to the brewery site, some high rise apartment buildings and even taller mirrored office type buildings. The views from inside the Vista Tower were okay, but nothing special, and there wasn't really anything to see in the tower itself. I did like how the tower contrasted with its surroundings as the orange and terracotta bricks it was made from contrasted nicely to the grey overcast day and the grey concrete and mirrored tiles, and general bland beigeness of the surrounding buildings.

Next was the Exhibition Extension, which was on the old waste water treatment site. I liked the long metal prods that looks like flowers getting ready to bloom. I think that you could move then and that they made a noise, but I have forgotten as I am writing this up too long after my visit. I walked around the different floors of the Exhibition Extension, but none of the exhibitions really stood out to me. I much preferred looking at the views of the surrounding area. While the views from the Vista Tower had been of the more modern neighbourhood, here I got views of decrepit older looking buildings, older and newer looking apartment buildings and lots of greenery. It made for a much more interesting view. There was a great curved walkway that led down to and around the sedimentation tank and another exhibition space. I headed into the exhibition space and had a look around there. This one was a bit more interesting. I liked the iron sculptures that blended in the iron roof. There were also concrete ladders that you could climb to get closer to the sculptures. These looked like a health and safety nightmare as there were no guardrails. There was also a random animal silhouette display that you could view through a large hole in the wall.

I headed down to the sedimentation tank and took a quick look around there. I quite liked it, it was low key and pretty. I liked the mix of concrete, turquoise painted metal structures and some pretty purple flowers that added little bursts of colour. Next, I headed into the auditorium/media hall, lots of people were using this as a good place to take a rest as there was a lot of seating. This area was a bit mixed as there seemed to be lots of the old brewery equipment on display, a shop selling beer, a restaurant and more exhibition space. I really liked the display that was all reddy pink lights. It felt like being in space, in a galaxy far, far away. I came outside and walked among the fermentation silos. There were some display areas in some of the silos, so I wandered through those having a quick look at the displays. I liked that you could walk up to the top of some of the silos and I enjoyed the views of the silos and also the neighbourhood. I loved the decayed look of some of the older buildings.

After leaving the silos, I headed to the building across the way from them. I think it was still part of the brewery site. I took a random entrance and started to climb the stairs, after a few flights, I tried to head in and see what was inside the building, but it seemed to be office space, so I exited and kept going up the stairs to reach the roof. There was an exhibition on the roof that I took a took a quick look at, but for me the star attraction was the views. You got a real mix of views; the rejuvenated brewery site and brand new looking mall below, the silos, Wutongshan, construction sites, and aerials in another direction. When I tired of the view I headed down to the ground floor of the building and had a quick look at the stuff on display there. It was a bit of an information overload and I wasn't in the mood to read it all. When we'd finished looking around, we headed into the neighbourhood for a quick walk around. We didn't go the fancy new looking parts, but the older area, much more interesting in my opinion. We headed to the water tower to get some photos and then walked through some of the smaller building complexes.

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