Pills, Teas, and Songs

Stories of Medicine around the World

Debby Nguyen

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781637301135
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Chapter 1

Traditional Chinese Medicine: Herbal Tea and Heritage

“Are those the famous Po Chai pills from Hong Kong? What do people use them for?” I asked the attending store clerk who’s in charge of the pharmacy area at Jai Ho Supermarket in Boston’s 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.

“Yeah, this is Po Chai. It’s for everything, you know, mostly stomach problems, indigestion, diarrhea…Is it for your grandparents? It’s mostly older people that use this,” he explained while gesturing at his stomach. “We also have these Seirogan pills that are similar but they’re from Japan, not Hong Kong.”

“It’s not for my grandparents. Recently I’ve been researching traditional Chinese medicine for a personal project and was surprised to find Po Chai here,” 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 I’ve 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, “Oh my god yes, I know Po Chai! Our family always has them around the house, and I can’t go anywhere without them.”

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 Chai’s boxes when writing my art history paper on packaging design, the medicine’s 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 “cure-all” 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 Chai’s 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, it’s impossible to not talk about the packaging of Po Chai pills which hasn’t 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 grandparents’ death anniversaries or Lunar New Year’s 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 Phật Bà Quan Âm (also known as Guan Yin in Mandarin) who is a Buddhist bodhisattva—a person on the path to Buddhahood who works for the collective enlightenment of all beings.

A young Leung saw that his father’s 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 Mui’s 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 Kei’s 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 2016–2017 fiscal year, 74 million Hong Kong dollars’ worth of pills were sold.16

“The heritage and credibility are so important,” 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, “I think Hong Kong-made products give people a sense of belonging.”18 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 “what paying customers especially ask for is a native experience…handling of currencies, date and telephone number formats, different character sets, time zone differences, right-to-left writing, and other culture-related conventions,” said Maren Baetje-Mbaye, who manages localization projects.19

Chu’s words ring true, as I’ve heard Po Chai mentioned by multiple friends, and it’s not only sold in Asian supermarkets like Jai ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography