ONE BRIGHT MORNING early this month, a group of Coca-Cola workers arrived outside one of Qingdao's busiest department stores and marched over to stalls shielded from the sun by an umbrella in the blue and white colours of their bitter rival, Pepsi-Cola.
'We give you five cases of Coke and you switch the Pepsi umbrella for one of ours,' they said. The stall-holders, who count their profits in yuan, agreed and the blue and white umbrella was replaced by a red one of the world's best-selling cola.
The operation proceeded smoothly and nearly 50 umbrellas had been removed when the news reached the ears of Chen Liang, chief salesman for Pepsi in Qingdao. Enraged, he mobilised his troops on to the streets to stop the Coke offensive.
At a soft-drinks shop in the city centre, three of them found the Coke men in the process of cutting up Pepsi banners. But the Coke workers locked them and their umbrellas into a Coke car and drove them to their head office. Only after the police were called were the three released.
This was an exceptional day in the cola war in this pretty coastal city, better known for its beer, beaches, container port and German architecture.
The war pits the incumbent, Coca-Cola - which opened a spanking new plant in the city in 1995 - against the pushy newcomer, which only set up a sales operation in 1999 with a noisy launch at Carrefour, one of the city's biggest supermarkets.
