Sunday, January 14, 2018

Blast from the Past: Ad for Taiwan's first dairy farm =UPDATED=

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This ad for Taiwan's first dairy farm, 柊牧場, dates from 1899. A Japanese man who said his relatives had run it posted it to Facebook, where it was shared around by the awesome Katy Hui-wen Hung, who I need to get up and interview. She said that the farm originally stood on Xinyi Road near what is now the Da-an MRT (Xinyi Rd and Yongkang St, according to this). This site here says it was moved in 1902 to the Xinyi Road location since the land for the ranch was to become Taipei Park. According to this article, it was established in 1896 to supply Japanese military servicemen in Taiwan, especially the wounded in hospital. By 1899 it had six dairy cows and produced 6-7 liters of milk a day (source). After the second world war it was folded into Taiwan's government livestock company.

Here is another ad:

This ad appears to date from the 1920s, from before 1923. The characters for "cooperative association" and "cooperatively sold" (I think, corrections welcome) appear on the left side in small font. In 1923 the ranch left the dairy cooperative founded in 1919 and sold independently, according to the article above.

UPDATE: My friend Drew remarked on Facebook:
Actually, this was a pretty big deal back then and it is really emblematic of the impact Meiji era values in concepts of modernity had on Taiwanese cultural life. 

This first dairy was established at the dawn of modern dairy farming with the use of pasteurization for milk beginning only in 1886. This paved the way for further mechanization of the dairy process capped by the use of stainless steel containers and wide spread use of refrigeration in the early 1900s.

Dairy farming and sanitary dairy products symbolized values of “advancement” that the Japanese sought to emulate in American and European countries. It is amazing that they would establish a dairy so early in Taiwan and speaks volumes of the relationship between Japan and their Taiwanese colony.


Katy posted this pic of a bottle from the dairy.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome! That's a better looking ad than a lot of stuff today!

Taipei Air Station said...

Many have forgotten the Dairy that showed-up in Taipei in the 1960s. Foremost Dairy. Here is a photo of a refrigerator,located in the Hostel at Shihmen Radar Site, in the 1960s. In the bottom shelf of the refrigerator door are a number of Foremost Milk bottles. Who remembers? The milk was bottled in clear glass bottles with beer style caps. This was the only "fresh Local Dairy Milk" I ever saw in Taipei, (1965-1968). If you shopped in the military commissary you got something that tasted like powdered milk in a half gallon carton.

Michael Turton said...

Ha thanks. I never imagined fresh milk in Taipei at that time...