Three Legs Cooling Water facts for kids
Three Legs Cooling Water (also known as San Jiao Biao Qing Re Shui in Chinese) is a special drink. It's based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and is made by a company called Wen Ken Group. This drink tastes a bit like plain water. It has been around for a very long time, since 1937!
People drink Three Legs Cooling Water to help with something called "heatiness" in the body. This "heatiness" can make you feel unwell. It might cause things like a fever or a toothache. Other signs of "heatiness" can be red eyes, sweating a lot, feeling annoyed, or being tired. Eating too much fried or spicy food, stress, or hot weather can sometimes cause "heatiness."
This cooling water is made from de-ionised water and a natural mineral called gypsum fibrosum. Gypsum fibrosum is a type of stone. It is known in TCM for its "cooling" properties. Drinking Three Legs Cooling Water is believed to help cool your body down. It helps bring your body back into balance.
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The Story of Three Legs Cooling Water
The Three Legs Brand started in 1937. This was when the Wen Ken Group company began in a place called British Malaya, which is now Malaysia. The cooling water was one of the company's first four main products. The other products helped with headaches, coughs, and skin rashes.
These products were made using old medical recipes. The company's founders were from China. They wanted to create simple medicines that people could buy easily. These medicines helped with common problems like "heatiness."
The recipe for Three Legs Cooling Water came from a traditional way to use minerals. It was made to get rid of "heatiness" from the body. In the past, many Chinese immigrants drank it. They used it to help their bodies get used to the hot weather in the Nanyang region.
Modern Bottles and Stopping Fake Products
In the 1980s, the company started putting its cooling water in plastic bottles. Before that, it was sold in glass bottles. People liked the plastic bottles because they were lighter and easier to carry. This helped the drink become even more popular!
As Three Legs Cooling Water became very well-known, other companies started making fake versions. To stop this, Wen Ken Group bought a special machine. This machine put the Three Legs Brand logo onto the neck of every bottle. This way, customers could easily tell the real cooling water from the fake ones.
Why the Rhinoceros?
The Original Label
The very first bottles of Three Legs Cooling Water had a picture of a rhinoceros on the label. Even though the drink doesn't have any animal parts in it, the company chose the rhino. This is because, in old Chinese medicine, a rhino's horn was thought to have "cooling" powers. From the 1950s to the 1990s, bottles sold in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia all showed a rhinoceros.
Changing the Label in Singapore
In the early 1990s, the Singapore Ministry of Health asked the company to remove the rhino picture. Rhinos are an endangered animal. Products made from rhinos were not allowed to be sold. The government worried that the picture might make people think the drink contained rhino parts.
Because of this, the company created a different label for bottles sold in Singapore. This new label does not have a rhinoceros on it at all. You can see an example of this label at the top of this article.
New Drinks: Cool Rhino
In 2008, Wen Ken Group launched a new, modern version of their cooling water. This new drink is called Cool Rhino. It has almost the same ingredients as the original. But it also has an extra ingredient called Calcitum. This ingredient is said to make the drink even more cooling.
The name Cool Rhino comes from the original cooling water and the rhino symbol on the Malaysian label. You can even freeze Cool Rhino into ice cubes! It can also be mixed with other drinks.
Cool Rhino looks different from the original cooling water. It was made to be a newer, trendier drink. It was created to attract younger people. In 2008, Cool Rhino even won a special award from the Malaysian government called the Malaysia Good Design Mark.
Cool Rhino O2
Also in 2008, Wen Ken Group launched another new drink called Cool Rhino O2. However, this drink is only sold in Malaysia and Hong Kong. Cool Rhino O2 is similar to Cool Rhino, but it has extra oxygen added to it. This oxygen is supposed to help your red blood cells carry more oxygen.
What's Inside?
The main ingredients in Three Legs Cooling Water are:
- Gypsum fibrosum
- Calcitum (in Cool Rhino and Cool Rhino O2)
- De-ionised water
