For the sake of nostalgia, I bought a pack of Marie biscuits from a HongKong supermarket today in Shanghai. When I was a boy growing up in Singapore, Marie biscuits were the standard fare to stave off hunger in between meals. In our home, we would have them usually around three o’clock in the afternoon, accompanied by a glass of Milo (hot chocolate milk beverage) or thick black Sumatran coffee. This would be the balmy ex-British colony’s equivalent of English tea. The Marie biscuit, we are told by Wikipedia, “was created by an English bakery Peek Freans in London in 1874 to commemorate the marriage of the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia to the Duke of Edinburgh. It became popular throughout Europe, particularly in Spain where, following the Spanish Civil War, the biscuit became a symbol of Spain’s economic recovery after bakers produced mass quantities to consume a surplus of wheat.”

The Marie biscuits in Singapore in the seventies were made by a famous local biscuit factory called Khong Guan, founded 1947, right after the Pacific war. The biscuits I had today were produced by Galletas Gullon in Palencia, Spain; a factory which was founded in 1892. They were imported into China by a Shanghai/Beijing company called Shanghai Kwei Chun, founded in 1996. Economic globalisation, cross-cultural influences, the rise and fall of nations; some things don’t change. After all these years, the biscuit still has its distinctive (Russian?) pattern around its edge; a medallion or a dharmachakra with its 12 dimples like the face of time; and 4 other dimples surrounding the name “MARIE” (or “MARIA” in Spanish), stamped with a flourish.