Tianyuan Chemical Factory

When I was in middle school, right across from the school was the WhiteCat Technology Park. Yes, WhiteCat as in the Chinese dishwashing detergent brand.

I remember teachers mentioning that the site used to be the Tianyuan Chemical Factory. There was also a chemistry competition called the Tianyuan Cup. Strangely, I never really wondered what “Tianyuan” meant.

Until recently, when I found a surprising connection through the Chinese American stand-up comedian Jimmy O. Yang.

Jimmy O. Yang’s Chinese name is Ou-Yang Wancheng. Many people first came to know him through his role in the HBO series Silicon Valley about ten years ago. Later, he also released stand-up specials, and some of his clips became widely shared.

At first, I did not know much about his background. I only noticed that in his stand-up, he liked to talk about his mother. What was especially funny to me was that the tone and cadence he used when imitating her sounded almost exactly like my own mother.

That made me wonder: was his mother also from Shanghai? Or at least from a Wu-speaking region?

After looking it up, I found that he was born in Hong Kong and later studied in the United States, but both of his parents are from Shanghai. He has also posted videos on Xiaohongshu where he switches between Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, and English, all quite naturally.

In a recent video clip, he mentioned that his family once founded Tianchu MSG. That made me curious enough to keep digging.

Tianchu MSG was China’s first monosodium glutamate manufacturer, founded in Shanghai in the early 1920s. At the time, Ajinomoto, the Japanese company that invented MSG, dominated the Chinese seasoning market. After Tianchu introduced its Foshou brand MSG, it broke that position and pushed Ajinomoto out of the Chinese market.

The main founder of Tianchu was Zhang Yiyun. He came from Ningbo, inherited his family’s business in Shanghai, and worked in the traditional sauce and condiment trade. He was also Jimmy O. Yang’s great-grandfather.

Because MSG production depended on imported raw materials, Zhang later co-founded Tianyuan Chemical Factory and several other companies. “Tianyuan” came from “Tianchu raw materials.” The factory was established in 1929, became one of China’s earliest chlor-alkali factories, and was once known as China’s first chlor-alkali plant.

About twenty years ago, the related company was renamed Shanghai Guanshengyuan Tianchu Seasoning Co., Ltd., becoming part of Guanshengyuan. In a roundabout way, it also became part of the state-owned enterprise system.

So a name I passed every day in middle school without thinking about it can now be connected, through the family story of a Chinese American comedian, back to Shanghai’s early national industry, MSG, chemical factories, and the urban space I knew as a child.

Some clues are always lying there. We just have not yet found the entry point that makes them light up.