China has only one Time Zone…..

Source: Flickr (under Creative Commons license); Author: David Gordillo

Which means that while it’s Five O’Clock somewhere, it’s only that hour once (er, twice, if you count a.m.) per day in the entire country. Still, it doesn’t stop China from achieving the following notable distinction: Since the year 2000, China has reigned supreme as the world’s leader in beer production! In 2012, China produced nearly 440 million hectoliters of beer, versus the nearly 228 million produced by the United States, in second place.

And China might win some barbecue competitions also, because with nearly a half-billion pigs, it raises more pork than the next 43 pork-producing companies combined, seven times more pork than second-place United States.

I think that the United States continues to use the most hops in beer worldwide, because of all of us craft beer hophead snobficianados. I’ll have to see if there are any statistics on that. And I have no idea about barbecue sauce either.