Label Me Nostalgic
The Mao years were the golden age of soda pop in China. Coca-Cola had dominated the market in the 1930s and ‘40s, but once the Communists took over, all foreign companies were expelled from China. With the American behemoth out of the picture, it was very much the era of “Let a hundred soda pops contend.”
Some bottling plants had the resources and ambition to scale up (to read more about them, click here), but for every Arctic Ocean or Ice Peak, there were dozens of small-time sodas that never aspired to hydrate anyone but their local cadres and comrades. Sure enough, these regional brands did not survive the opening up and reform policies of the 1980s and ’90s. Thankfully, we still have a few artifacts of their existence, because collectors who saw the bottling factories shutting down realized that their labels were worth saving.
When we did a search for “soda labels” (汽水商标) on the Chinese antiques website 997788.com, we found dozens of logos from long-forgotten bottling factories. From a graphic design standpoint, many had clearly made an effort to stand out with their bright colors and charming illustrations of fruit. For the most part, the labels feature minimalist “flat design” with backgrounds made up of overlapping geometric shapes (bands, chevrons, and ovals) and contrasting color blocks. Meanwhile, the typefaces juxtapose Chinese characters in hand-drawn chunky slabs with English lettering (pinyin) in thin cursives. At the time these labels were produced—i.e. the 1970s and ’80s—their mid-century modern aesthetic would have been considered quite dated in the West, but Chinese consumers would have been blissfully unaware of this fact.
As for the fizzy drinks being advertised, these local factory labels display a bonanza of unusual flavors. Because these beverage manufacturers were serving the mass market of their own particular region, they were practically duty-bound to offer crowd-pleasing flavors such as orange, tangerine, and mixed fruit. What fascinates us, however, are the other fruit flavors that crop up over and over again in these labels. Pineapple was clearly a favorite, and banana was wildly popular as well. Pear, peach, and hawthorn berry were also common, blackcurrant and grape show up occasionally, and lemon seems to have been quite rare.
Mixed in among all these were fascinating regional specialties such as birch sap soda (Northeast), chrysanthemum soda (Hubei), and osmanthus blossom soda (Guangxi). It makes us wonder about all the local Chinese fizzy pops that did not leave a colorful paper label to remember them by.
At any rate, the artwork of these vintage labels was too delightful not to share. Enjoy these samples of a simpler time.
This article is a companion piece to “When the Bubble Burst.”
A version of this article was originally published in Issue 7 of The Cleaver Quarterly.
