Chapter 1
Traditional Chinese Medicine: Herbal Tea and Heritage
āAre those the famous Po Chai pills from Hong Kong? What do people use them for?ā I asked the attending store clerk whoās in charge of the pharmacy area at Jai Ho Supermarket in Bostonās Chinatown.
Being away from home in Vietnam, I go to Jai Ho every now and then to shop for food, and my favorite thing about this small supermarket is the pharmacy counter just to the left of the entrance, with clear shelves displaying medicines and supplements imported from Asia. I always spend a few minutes crouching in the small space near the entrance and marvel at the intricate details and colors on each medicine package.
āYeah, this is Po Chai. Itās for everything, you know, mostly stomach problems, indigestion, diarrheaā¦Is it for your grandparents? Itās mostly older people that use this,ā he explained while gesturing at his stomach. āWe also have these Seirogan pills that are similar but theyāre from Japan, not Hong Kong.ā
āItās not for my grandparents. Recently Iāve been researching traditional Chinese medicine for a personal project and was surprised to find Po Chai here,ā I said, to which the clerk told me to feel free to take photos of the pills and to come back anytime if I have any questions. Although Iāve never used Po Chai pills myself nor am I from Hong Kong, I felt a strange sense of joy when I found them in the middle of Boston, a city famous for Western biomedicine and pharmaceuticals.
When I told one of my friends from Singapore, Gaea, about my book and that I found Po Chai pills in Chinatown, her eyes lit up with excitement. She said, āOh my god yes, I know Po Chai! Our family always has them around the house, and I canāt go anywhere without them.ā
Clearly, this is a popular household medicine that transcends borders; even though it was made in Hong Kong, people from Singapore to Boston seem to have it in their medicine cabinets. Although I was initially interested in the artistic elements on Po Chaiās boxes when writing my art history paper on packaging design, the medicineās popularity also got me interested in the story behind the medicine and its cultural significance.
Left, Seirogan pills; right, Po Chai pills
Po Chai pills are a ācure-allā medicine Chinese families have relied on for decades. Made to relieve stomach pains, the pills are also reputed to reduce menstrual cramps and even cold symptoms. These tiny herbal pills were developed in 1896 by Li Shiu-kei in Guangdong province and were manufactured there until 1949 when the Li family fled to Hong Kong following the Communist Revolution.12 As their factory in the mainland was nationalized, the Li family opened a new facility in Hong Kong, and by then, Po Chai pills were already a household name in the city with a high level of trust from consumers. There was even a series of animated TV commercials in the 1970s and 80s that boosted Po Chaiās popularity, and today, social media campaigns such as Facebook ads demonstrate an effort to adapt to modern marketing strategies.13
When it comes to marketing, itās impossible to not talk about the packaging of Po Chai pills which hasnāt changed much over the years and the legendary designer behind it, Leung Chi Mui. Leung was born in 1910 in Canton, now known as Guangzhou, China. In Canton, his father owned a joss stick shop called Tak Ming Chai.14 Also known as incense, joss sticks release fragrant smoke when burned and are an important element of Chinese folk religion and other Asian cultures.
Growing up Vietnamese, I was also taught to burn incense for important occasions such as my grandparentsā death anniversaries or Lunar New Yearās when we would visit Buddhist pagodas. Packs of incense are often wrapped in colorful paper of red and yellow with intricate patterns depicting gods and goddesses, such as Phįŗt BĆ Quan Ćm (also known as Guan Yin in Mandarin) who is a Buddhist bodhisattvaāa person on the path to Buddhahood who works for the collective enlightenment of all beings.
A young Leung saw that his fatherās joss sticks were wrapped in paper with simplistic designs and thought they were too old-fashioned, so he started redesigning these packages for the family shop. This marked the beginning of Leung Chi Muiās packaging design career, and after graduating from art school in 1937, he started designing packages for medicine brands, including the famous Li Chung Sing Tong Po Chai pills and Wong Lo Kat herbal tea.15
Although Po Chai pills today are made using more advanced technologies and packaged with machines imported from Europe, the packaging remains the same with the company crest featuring Li Shiu Keiās portrait and the stylized design signature of Leung Chi Mui. Features such as elaborate borders and baroque-inspired patterns make Po Chai pills stand out from many other traditional Chinese medicine brands today that have opted to modernize their packaging and eliminated decorative elements. The Po Chai brand is popular among the Chinese diaspora and in the 2016ā2017 fiscal year, 74 million Hong Kong dollarsā worth of pills were sold.16
āThe heritage and credibility are so important,ā explains Kevin Chu, the general manager of Li Chung Shing Tong.17
The public and the brand are certainly connected, and as Chu puts it, āI think Hong Kong-made products give people a sense of belonging.ā18 Familiarity and nostalgia have a special effect on packaging design for any product, for both immigrants and those who are born and raised in the homeland. Learning from heritage brands with a strong base of loyal customers, companies today who consider going global have become aware that āwhat paying customers especially ask for is a native experienceā¦handling of currencies, date and telephone number formats, different character sets, time zone differences, right-to-left writing, and other culture-related conventions,ā said Maren Baetje-Mbaye, who manages localization projects.19
Chuās words ring true, as Iāve heard Po Chai mentioned by multiple friends, and itās not only sold in Asian supermarkets like Jai ...