Among the artifacts on display in Tracks & Traces: Reconstructing Chinese History in Southern Idaho is a ceramic liquor bottle, a remnant of the global trade networks that connected China to the United States in the early 20th century. Produced in the 1930s by the renowned Chinese distillery Wing Lee Wai, this bottle once held Ng Ka Pi—a potent variety of baijiu (“white spirit”) infused with the medicinal herb Wu Jia Pi.
The distillery Wing Lee Wai, which translates to “eternal fortune and fame,” was founded in 1876 by Wong Sing-hui in Nanhai, a district of Foshan, Guangdong, China. By the 1920s, the company had become one of China’s largest distilleries, exporting spirits to Chinese communities overseas, including those in Idaho. The bottle likely dates from between 1935 and 1940 as it’s label bears the distillery’s “Two Cranes” trademark, first registered in 1914, and an embossed marking reading “Federal Law Forbids Sale or Reuse of this Bottle” which was a requirement introduced after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
Liquor bottles like this one offer a glimpse into the everyday lives of Chinese immigrants in Idaho, where food and drink helped maintain cultural ties to their homeland. Whether it was enjoyed as a medicinal tonic or a social drink, Ng Ka Pi was likely familiar to many who lived and worked in Idaho’s mining camps, railroad towns, and small Chinatowns.
We invite you to visit Tracks & Traces in The Community Library’s foyer to see this artifact and others that reveal the history of Chinese immigrants in southern Idaho. The exhibit is on display now through the end of May.
On Loan from the Blaine County Historical Museum in Hailey, 2025.FIC.1.1.
