As with just about any product, a fake version of alcohol is readily available in China. And the Beijing night scene, a booming and relatively new one, offers moonshine drinks a dime a dozen. Propaganda is one of those bars that can guarantee a bleary night. It might also bring a night at the hospital. With all you-can-drink 30 RMB nights (that's about $4.39), it's guaranteed that some Olympic tourists this summer will be enjoying the cheap drinks that a lot of Beijing bars offer.

I know the moonshine effect all too well, including the feeling you have the next morning that your head is filled entirely of bricks. When asking around it seems that most tourists are happy to risk the effects of cheap alcohol in exchange for a night of cheap binge drinking. One tourist I spoke to on the street had visited Propaganda several times this summer and preferred to ignore my comment about fake alcohol, choosing instead to rave about the cheap prices, great music and sweaty dance floor. When faced with a plethora of drink choices at a fraction of the cost back home, most people don't think further than their next drink, let alone the next morning. Few ever consider the serious long term health effects.

Back at home we complain about consumer rights and the lack of regulation of certain Chinese manufactured goods. How is it then that, once they are here, so many tourists don't seem to care about fake goods? Is the temptation of cheap things too great? It seems it just may be, given the large number of people who visit Beijing's cheap drinking holes. I guess few here have factored in the cost of liver failure when out for a night on the town.