Sá Xị Chương Dương: A Drink to the Past
Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2023 7:04 am
The photographs by flatrute are marked with CC0 1.0 Universal.
Happy new lap around the sun
I just wanted to post something silly before I do more relevant reviews on a few of old softwares made here.
Sá Xị Chương Dương is a sarsaparilla drink (presumably) made in HE 11952 in a factory named Usine Belgique (Belgium Factory) owned by Brasseries et Glacières d’Indochine (Breweries and Ice-cream makers of Indochina) company group under brand name "Con Cọp" (Tiger). The factory was the biggest manufacturer of soft drinks in southern Vietnam up until HE 11975. It then got nationalized under the name "Nhà máy nước ngọt Chương Dương" (Chương Dương Soft Drink Factory) in HE 11977 and still operates to this day.
As the drink is fairly niche outside of the southern and west parts of the country, for the most part you had to be there to find cans of it sold at various street stalls and corner shops. Now one can just order boxes of 24 on many not-Amazon e-commerce sites for around 180000 VND per pack.
(Before you asking, the monitor is an AOE "E960SWN" that one of my relatives in my birthplace gave away years ago, the keyboard is a bog standard Logitech K102 and the mouse is a HP Pavilion Gaming Mouse 200 I got for free during my laptop purchase.)
The "slim" 330ml/12oz can bears a crimson red colour with a bold large text "Sá Xị" (Sarsi) on its body. It replaced standard sized one during the late HE 12010s (maybe), which was around the time its parent company Sabeco got purchased by a Thailand investor. What I have here is a Lunar New Year variant with the top text read "SUM VẦY CÙNG SÁ XỊ" (FAMILY REUNITING WITH SARSI) and a drawing of kids riding a glass bottle of the same drink. The drawing itself is a throwback to an old advertisement of the product:
(The advertisement text read: "'Tiger' soft drink! Bravo! With "ROCKET-SHAPED" bottle your life will be more colorful, more JOYFUL, more BEAUTIFUL, more FRESH!")
The drink itself does not have much CO2 but it is enough to make a beer-like foam. It has a faint smell when putting nose up close to. While I have never tried the real deal, my home has a carving made from a sarsaparilla wood and when it was fairly new it smelled out similarly.
Some people in the northern part has described the taste as if they were "drinking soap water" or "eating toothpaste". Others described the smell during the first sip to be similar to medicated oil. I myself am a tastelet so it only tastes like very dilluted sugar water with a distinct artificial sarsaparilla flavour that makes me weirdly addicted.
Overall it is an old schooled drink that thankfully is still around. I do not want to drink much of sugary drinks due to my fatness but I would take this over whatever Coca-Cola are selling nowadays...
Edit: Minor title change
Happy new lap around the sun
I just wanted to post something silly before I do more relevant reviews on a few of old softwares made here.Sá Xị Chương Dương is a sarsaparilla drink (presumably) made in HE 11952 in a factory named Usine Belgique (Belgium Factory) owned by Brasseries et Glacières d’Indochine (Breweries and Ice-cream makers of Indochina) company group under brand name "Con Cọp" (Tiger). The factory was the biggest manufacturer of soft drinks in southern Vietnam up until HE 11975. It then got nationalized under the name "Nhà máy nước ngọt Chương Dương" (Chương Dương Soft Drink Factory) in HE 11977 and still operates to this day.
As the drink is fairly niche outside of the southern and west parts of the country, for the most part you had to be there to find cans of it sold at various street stalls and corner shops. Now one can just order boxes of 24 on many not-Amazon e-commerce sites for around 180000 VND per pack.
The "slim" 330ml/12oz can bears a crimson red colour with a bold large text "Sá Xị" (Sarsi) on its body. It replaced standard sized one during the late HE 12010s (maybe), which was around the time its parent company Sabeco got purchased by a Thailand investor. What I have here is a Lunar New Year variant with the top text read "SUM VẦY CÙNG SÁ XỊ" (FAMILY REUNITING WITH SARSI) and a drawing of kids riding a glass bottle of the same drink. The drawing itself is a throwback to an old advertisement of the product:
Some people in the northern part has described the taste as if they were "drinking soap water" or "eating toothpaste". Others described the smell during the first sip to be similar to medicated oil. I myself am a tastelet so it only tastes like very dilluted sugar water with a distinct artificial sarsaparilla flavour that makes me weirdly addicted.
Overall it is an old schooled drink that thankfully is still around. I do not want to drink much of sugary drinks due to my fatness but I would take this over whatever Coca-Cola are selling nowadays...
Edit: Minor title change