Check out the big brains on Shanghaiist

Recently, Shanghaiist was at McDonald's, where, to our dismay, they were out of Big Macs (or were making some in the back), so they tried to pawn off a new burger to us. It was some name we didn't recognize, and so we opted to wait for the Big Mac. Little did we know it was the "Royale with Cheese", aka the venerable Quarter Pounder, making its debut in China.

The Wall Street Journal tells us that the QP marks a change in McD's marketing strategy: Rather than trying to localize their food to suit the palettes of the Chinese, they are, with the QP, insisting on the cultural integrity of the product -- almost:

When McDonald's introduced the Quarter Pounder here earlier this month, it nixed an Asian-style triangle-shaped wrapper filled with beef or chicken and rice and decided against rolling out a "rice burger" in China. Still, the Chinese Quarter Pounder isn't identical to its U.S. counterpart: It has cucumbers instead of pickles and tomatoes and a spicy sauce appealing to the Chinese palate -- all the result of tests of more than 16 variations on consumers.

What's interesting about this is also the ad campaign they're running -- the TV spot is called "Feel The Beef" (viewable above):

The burger chain's TV commercials are even racier than the print ads. In one spot, a man and a woman eat Quarter Pounders, and close-up shots of the woman's neck and mouth are interspersed with images of fireworks and spraying water. The actors suck their fingers. The voice-over says: "You can feel it. Thicker. You can taste it. Juicier."

Come to think of it, one of the reasons we passed up the QP is because the picture made it look like a thick slab of chicken, and we'd never suck a chicken, no matter how thick and juicy it was.

In any case, this just the newest episode in that epic battle between McDs and KFC for ultimate supremacy in the universe. We're fairly confident that this will show up in the history books of 21st century Shanghai.