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Matches to MSG — China makes its own
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Wu Yunchu (1891-1953) was a typical Shanghai student preparing for the imperial exam that would lead to a government job. But he became interested in science, especially chemistry, in his teens and instead studied chemistry.
He went on to work in a laboratory for a government-owned steel company.
Such transformations — from studying ancient Chinese texts to modern Western science and technology — was not uncommon in the early 1900s.
Many schools specializing in science and technology were opened, both by the government and rich individuals.
“My father was already a xiu cai (秀才 those who passed the first round of the imperial exam) and his parents wanted him to continue preparing for the imperial exam. But many of his friends went to modern schools, so he applied to a shipping/maritime school,” 87-year-old Ren Xiulian tells Shanghai Daily in a telephone interview.
She now lives in California, and her late father, Ren Zhiheng, was among students who were attracted to modern technology. He started working for various equipment companies, both foreign and Chinese, and later opened his own business trading machinery parts. The company had investment from a British trading firm, which was not uncommon.
“Many of his classmates and peers did similar things to start their own business trading or making imported goods,” says the daughter.
It was the same for chemist Wu, who opened a match factory in 1919 in Wuhan, Hubei Province.
Imported matches had quickly replaced traditional hand-made flint in China and Chinese businessmen established their own factories.
The technology was simple, there was no need to hire many experienced workers, and matches were cheap to produce and easy to sell.
The first Chinese-funded match factory was established in 1887 in Xiamen, Fujian Province. In 1890, the first match factory in Shanghai was established and became one of the largest, with more than 1,000 employees.
Matches were called yang huo (洋火), which means imported fire, while hand-made flint was called tu huo (土火), meaning local fire. It was common to add the word yang, which also implies trendy, to imported goods, and tu, with a connotation of unfashionable, to traditional hand-made products.
Other popular businesses for Chinese merchants included yang bu (洋布), mass-produced textiles that were much cheaper than hand-made cloth, machinery, socks, soap, toothbrushes and cosmetics, among many others.
Wu’s match factory could not compete with foreign-funded factories that undercut his price; the company went bankrupt.
His next venture was monosodium glutamate (MSG), a food additive and flavor enhancer. In the 1920s, the only MSG on the market was Japan’s Ajinomoto, which was extracted from seafood.
Wu used his chemistry background and developed a new compound that extracted MSG from grain and sold for less than the Japanese product.
At the time, various movements like the May Fourth Movement (1919) inspired national patriotism that included rejection of imported products. Many Chinese merchants like Wu benefited from the trend to support domestic products.
In 1925, Wu got a UK patent for his MSG. Then he relinquished his domestic patent, revealed the ingredients and process and welcomed other Chinese merchants to produce MSG. Mass production further drove down the price and the market was filled with domestic MSG.
Wu started other factories to produce key elements in MSG that had been imported from Japan.
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