Flower Dew Water

[Randy W]

Perhaps because of that traditional Chinese medicine-inflected marketing copy, however, very few Chinese know that flower dew water isn’t a local invention, but an American import.

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A Chinese Eau de Cologne, By Way of America
It may smell like TCM, but China’s favorite summertime tonic has its roots in a New York pharmacy.

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The slender, green bottles sold by the Chinese mainland’s best-known brand, “Liushen,” are iconic among consumers of a certain age, who revere its purported ability to “soothe mosquito bites and invigorate the mind.”

Perhaps because of that traditional Chinese medicine-inflected marketing copy, however, very few Chinese know that flower dew water isn’t a local invention, but an American import.

According to Lanman & Kemp, the concoction’s best-known producer, it dates back to the early 19th century, when the New York-based perfumer Robert Murray invented a lightly perfumed liquid similar to Eau de Cologne. He named it “Florida Water,” supposedly for Florida’s association with the exotic — the region remained under Spanish rule until 1819 — and its connection to the famed “Fountain of Youth.” Capitalizing on the folktale, sellers claimed bottles of Florida Water could do everything from brighten the skin to turn back the clock on wrinkles.

 

 

Florida DOES kind of sound like flower dew.

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At various points, Lanman & Kemp, which Murray helped found, translated their product as “Bright Face Pure Perfume,” “White Rose Perfume,” and “Rose Sweet Fragrant Water.” It even tried to make the “Florida” branding work: In 1868, when a delegation of Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) envoys visited New York, one of them, Zhang Deyi, toured Lanman & Kemp’s factory and noticed that bottles intended for the Chinese market bore a label reading “Fuliulidi,” an unofficial phonetic rendering of “Florida.”

But the name that stuck was “Flower Dew Water” — hua lu shui — which had a distinctly poetic charm that appealed to local consumers, calling to mind classical verses like Wei Zhuang’s “Amid willow wisps and heavy flower dew / my thoughts I cannot bear,” or Ouyang Xiu’s “Dew hangs heavy on the flowers and the grass is dense / nearby houses have shut their curtains.” The bottle’s label, designed by famed Franco-British illustrator George du Maurier, reinforced this perception with its idyllic depiction of bards encircled by birds and flowers as they contemplate the Fountain of Youth.

 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Randy W (see edit history)