In ancient china, there was a kind of alcoholic beverage called li that was made from malted cereals. Some scholars think that this li wine was similar to beer because of its low alcoholic content. Inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells preserve the records of li wine. In the Zhou Dynasty, alcoholic beverages were classified into two types: rice wine and li wine. One chapter in The Classic of History says, “If you want to brew rice wine, use qu; if you want to brew the li wine, use malt.” It seems that there were two different technical processes in use for the production of the two types of wine during the Zhou Dynasty. After the Han Dynasty, li wine came to be neglected by rice wine made by qu, a kind of distilled yeast.

This article by Yang Tianqing and Daniel Kister.