Nanyang Brothers Tobacco advertisement: "Chinese people love Chinese goods" (Chinese Mail, Hong Kong, 1925)

Nanyang Brothers Tobacco advertisement: "Chinese people love Chinese goods" (Chinese Mail, Hong Kong, 1925)

Newspaper advertisement in which a tin and a loose cigarette marked 'Double Cross, 50 Cigarettes' sit against a background made entirely of one repeated line of characters, 'Chinese people love Chinese goods / Chinese cigarettes / China'. The slogan is printed hundreds of times as if the whole readership already said it, and it attaches national loyalty to a brand of cigarette.

Date
December 22, 1925
Period
Interwar
Made by
Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co., Ltd (Hong Kong and Shanghai)
Region
East Asia
Country
British Hong Kong
Medium
Advertisement
Issuer type
Corporation
Regime
British Hong Kong
Leader
Cecil Clementi
Audience
Domestic public
Purpose
Persuade or win support
Themes
Economy and finance, Empire and colonialism
Techniques
TransferBandwagon
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
Wikimedia Commons (Chinese Mail, Hong Kong, 22 December 1925), retrieved September 29, 2026
Rights
Public domain (published 1925; Wikimedia Commons tags it PD-1996, published outside the US before 1989)
Chinese Mail (Hong Kong), 22 December 1925, via Wikimedia Commons

Text on the object

Original (Chinese) · read from the image, not independently checked

中國人愛中國貨
中國人愛中國烟
中國人愛中國
[the three lines repeat across the whole background]

DOUBLE CROSS
50 CIGARETTES
[smaller label text on the tin: illegible]

[banner at foot, printed right to left] 白告司公限有草煙弟兄洋南
(南洋兄弟煙草有限公司告白)

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

Chinese people love Chinese goods
Chinese people love Chinese cigarettes
Chinese people love China
[the three lines repeat across the whole background]

DOUBLE CROSS
50 CIGARETTES
[smaller label text on the tin: illegible]

[banner at foot] Notice of the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company, Limited

The background text is a tiled slogan; the three lines were read from the repeated blocks and from the Commons description. Some cells are broken by the picture. The banner is printed right to left and is also given in normal reading order in brackets.