Having a Cup of American Ice Cream: Henningsen Produce Company and Its Hazelwood Ice Cream in Republican Shanghai

Based on business archives, advertisements, and newspaper articles, this paper focuses on the Henningsen Produce Company to explore this American-run food company’s business in Shanghai over the Republican Era. This paper argues that the “Americanness” of Henningsen and its ice cream products first contributed to the company’s success in Shanghai during the 1920s and 30s but disheartened its business under the anti-Americanism sentiment after WWII in the late 1940s. Henningsen first ran its business in Shanghai in 1913 and started to manufacture ice cream in the mid-1920s. To highlight the uniqueness of Hazelwood Ice Cream and gain favor from Chinese customers, Henningsen emphasized the American identity of this company and its products in its marketing and actively promoted an American way of life in its ads. Under this effective American-centered marketing, Hazelwood Ice Cream soon became a signature product and a token of urban modernity in Shanghai. However, WWII changed Shanghai urbanites’ love for Hazelwood and hit Henningsen’s business in Shanghai. In postwar 1946 and 1947, the skyrocketing rental fee increase of Henningsen’s refrigerated cabinets and successive labor strikes broke Henningsen’s collaboration with its Chinese dealers and workers, which further irritated Chinese people’s anger toward this American company. These affairs finally led to Henningsen leaving the Chinese market in late 1947 during China’s Civil War. After the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, the PRC government, based on Henningsen’s old plant and machinery, established Shanghai Yimin No. 1 Food Factory and promoted Guangming (Brightness) Ice Cream. Contemporary sources reveal that the brand Guangming means the brightness the PRC brought to Chinese people after Henningsen, the American capitalist, left Shanghai.