{"id":1327,"date":"2026-01-20T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/?p=1327"},"modified":"2026-01-20T13:07:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T13:07:41","slug":"candies-and-crises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/candies-and-crises\/","title":{"rendered":"Candies and Crises"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On 2nd October 1931, a couple of weeks after the so-called Mukden Incident staged by the Japanese as an excuse for invading Manchuria, readers of the newspaper Shenbao (Shanghai News)<\/em> who looked at the adverts learned about a \u201cgreat campaign\u201d to \u201cresist Japan and save the nation\u201d \u2013 by means of candy (fig. 1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201ccampaign\u201d was promoted by food company Guanshengyuan. It framed confectionery as a tool for getting the \u201cnew China\u2019s little masters\u201d accustomed to using \u201cnational goods\u201d, and resisting the Japanese. Children, who according to the advert \u201cnaturally\u201d loved playing and loved eating, ought to consume the company\u2019s \u201cartistic and cultured\u201d sweets, instead of the \u201clamentably\u201d widespread Japanese goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, another advertisement further harnessed confectionery to patriotic education (fig. 2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fig. 2: Detail of Guanshengyuan advertisement for patriotic confectionery, showing cookie drum and pistol candy. Shenbao 4 October 1931, p. 2. Public domain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The advert placed the consumption of cookies and candy within the \u201canti-Japanese movement.\u201d At times, it was quite confrontational. For example, the advert promoted cookie cars as \u201chighly scientific toy foodstuff\u201d, with a \u201cnovel\u201d, \u201csmoothly rolling\u201d car-shaped package. By contrast, cookie drums and pistol candy struck a more militaristic note \u2013 even while other contemporary Guanshengyuan adverts still construed them as combining education with play and nourishment. The cookie drum set came with sticks to beat it, perhaps for \u201crising together\u201d and \u201cadvancing\u201d, as the claim went. And pistol candy was said to offer children an early training in shooting, possibly to \u201coverthrow Japanese imperialism\u201d, as the slogan declared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1933, Guanshengyuan\u2019s resolve to prepare children for national emergencies extended even further (fig. 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fig. 3: Guanshengyuan advertisement for tank candy. Xiandai fumu <\/em>vol. 1 no. 1, 1933, n. p. Public domain. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Its advert in the periodical Xiandai fumu<\/em> (Modern Parents<\/em>) treated readers to a short lesson on tanks, including their role in the 1932 Japanese attack on Shanghai. It also construed the company\u2019s tank candy as an aid for raising activist citizens, conversant with the military. Eating the candy, moreover, children would \u201cnever forget the national crisis\u201d \u2013 namely, China’s imperiled state of Japanese encroachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guanshengyuan\u2019s strategy combined then-current appeals for patriotic consumption and national salvation with ideas about childhood and leisure promoted by experts from the early twentieth century. In particular, it built upon conceptions of children as \u201cnaturally\u201d play-loving, and of toys as key instructive tools for shaping youngsters into citizens who would rescue China. This marketing approach was far from unusual. At the same time, however, the company piggybacked on expert discourses in order to attach the educational-scientific-artistic tag to items that, to many experts, would have had little educational value \u2013 because, like traditional edible toys, these products combined playing and eating, which according to experts ought to be kept separate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Valentina Boretti<\/strong> is Research Associate in the Department of History at SOAS University of London. She works on the cultural history of modern China. Her current research uses leisure, material culture, and extra-curricular education to explore the making and mobilizing of child and adult citizens from the 1900s to the 1970s. Her most recent publications discuss the gendering of children (in The Routledge Companion to Gender and Childhood<\/em>, ed. Mary Zaborskis, 2025), and approaches to science and technology through toys (in Rethinking Childhood in Modern Chinese History<\/em>, ed. Isabella Jackson and Yushu Geng, 2025) in twentieth-century China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 2nd October 1931, a couple of weeks after the so-called Mukden Incident staged by the Japanese as an excuse for invading Manchuria, readers of the newspaper Shenbao (Shanghai News) who looked at the adverts learned about a \u201cgreat campaign\u201d to \u201cresist Japan and save the nation\u201d \u2013 by means of candy (fig. 1). The \u201ccampaign\u201d was promoted by food company Guanshengyuan. It framed confectionery as a tool for getting the \u201cnew China\u2019s little masters\u201d accustomed to using \u201cnational goods\u201d, and resisting the Japanese. Children, who according to the advert \u201cnaturally\u201d loved playing and loved eating, ought to consume the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-childish-things"],"yoast_head":"\nCandies and Crises - Digital Childhoods<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/candies-and-crises\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Candies and Crises - Digital Childhoods\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On 2nd October 1931, a couple of weeks after the so-called Mukden Incident staged by the Japanese as an excuse for invading Manchuria, readers of the newspaper Shenbao (Shanghai News) who looked at the adverts learned about a \u201cgreat campaign\u201d to \u201cresist Japan and save the nation\u201d \u2013 by means of candy (fig. 1). The \u201ccampaign\u201d was promoted by food company Guanshengyuan. It framed confectionery as a tool for getting the \u201cnew China\u2019s little masters\u201d accustomed to using \u201cnational goods\u201d, and resisting the Japanese. 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