Abstract

Beginning in the 1920s, Coca-Cola and Hazelwood Ice Cream replaced traditional Chinese refreshments and became favorites among urban consumers, especially women. The act of consuming these foreign foods signified an embrace of new lifestyles shaped by transnational consumer culture. Chinese-language entertainment and fashion magazines frequently featured posed and candid photographs of modern Chinese women enjoying these refreshments at cafés, parks, pools, restaurants, and in other public spaces. Drawing on these images, this article argues that Western cold refreshments functioned as visible markers of modernity in urban life and contributed to the redefinition of urban Chinese femininity between the 1920s and the 1940s. Many of these photographs were of clear commercial intent: foreign companies and local female celebrities and socialites leveraged one another's fame to enhance their own public visibility. But these images also portrayed anonymous women eating and drinking these Western products while engaging in reading, sports, or other social activities. Together with other foreign materials and activities, Western cold refreshments constituted an integral component of the modern lifestyle that urban Chinese women had become increasingly able to afford. By examining women’s portraits through consumption, this study reveals how global trade, mass media, and local
tastes interacted to reshape the meanings of modern life and womanhood.

Keywords: Western cold refreshments, Coca-Cola, Hazelwood Ice
Cream, modern woman, Chinese cosmopolitan modernity