In Shijiazhuang, Hebei, on the back of the packaging for "Moding"—a puffed snack costing mere pennies per bag—a striking line of large text is boldly printed: "Never Forget National Humiliation—The Factory Setting for Every Chinese Person." This line instantly propelled this otherwise unremarkable, low-cost snack into the spotlight of public opinion, while also opening up a rarely discussed line of inquiry: Can—or should—patriotism truly be printed on a packaging bag destined to be tossed into the trash?
I. "National Humiliation" as a "Factory Setting"
The snack's initial rise to popularity was accompanied by a sense of unpretentious, grassroots positivity. In the eyes of many consumers, this represented a small business—while "struggling to survive in the cracks" of the market—taking the opportunity to offer fellow citizens a miniature history lesson. Compared to the "junk food" packaging that merely boasts of being "explosively delicious," this company appeared to possess both backbone and sentiment. Spending fifty cents on a bag of snacks while simultaneously receiving a reminder to "never forget national humiliation" seemed, to many, like a worthwhile emotional exchange.
However, the voices of dissent were equally sharp. Critics argued that printing memories of the nation's deepest suffering—such as the Nanjing Massacre—on cheap plastic packaging that is consumed and casually discarded within minutes constitutes, in itself, a form of disrespect toward history. When "national humiliation" is reduced to mere packaging copy, it is downgraded from a weighty collective memory into a piece of "cultural merchandise"—something to be consumed and digested.
II. The Boundaries of Patriotic Commerce
At the heart of this controversy lies a scrutiny of the boundaries of "patriotic marketing."
In this era where "traffic is king," the term "domestic goods" (*Guohuo*) has long served as a magic formula for driving sales. While companies certainly have the right to express their patriotic stance, if such expressions directly translate into increased sales, it becomes exceedingly difficult to distinguish where genuine "sentiment" ends and pure "business" begins. The concern voiced by netizens is this: If today one can print "Never Forget National Humiliation" on a bag of *Moding*, will tomorrow see merchants—desperate to grab eyeballs—printing "The Nanjing Massacre" on T-shirts or "The Old Summer Palace" on shoe insoles?
Such fears are not unfounded. When solemn history is deconstructed into easily digestible "memes" and printed on disposable consumer goods, the inherent gravity of history itself is eroded. As some scholars have noted, the transmission of historical memory requires a sense of ritual—a quality that, by its very nature, tends to preclude triviality.
III. To Remember, or to Forget?
Notably, this product was neither banned by regulatory authorities nor met with widespread boycotts. On the contrary, its sales figures have continued to rise amidst the controversy. This serves as a stark illustration of the complex mindset prevailing in contemporary society: we yearn to encounter grand historical narratives within the fabric of our daily lives, yet we simultaneously feel uneasy when those very narratives are co-opted by commercial interests.
True adherence to the maxim "Never Forget National Humiliation" should not remain confined to the packaging of a snack food, nor should it be limited solely to the annual observance of December 13th. Rather, it must reside within our history textbooks, within our profound appreciation for peace, and within our commitment to critiquing social injustice and building the future of our nation.
Printing this phrase on a snack package may indeed cause one's heart to clench for a fleeting moment—the instant the wrapper is torn open. Yet, if we remember our national humiliation only in that solitary moment of unwrapping a snack, that, in itself, constitutes the greatest act of forgetting history.
