You might have seen your Eastern European friends whipping out these vintage beauties to pour hot water into their gaiwan, or you've been to a village in China and spotted the locals using them daily. So what are those 1-3-liter babushka flasks with gigantic flowers and dragons printed on them? Well, nobody actually calls them "babushka thermos," but I guarantee you that almost every elderly couple from China to Poland will have at least one lying somewhere in their attic or cellar if not proudly occupying the prestigious place on top of the kitchen fridge.
It's not a "Thermos"
Technically speaking, the word "Thermos" is a Trademark belonging to the German company Thermos GmbH, one of the most well-known brands for vacuum flasks in Europe. The inventor of the vacuum flask (or insulating flask) is the Scottish scientist James Dewar, but nobody uses the name "Dewar's Flask."
Thermos improved the Dewar's Flask design and began offering it on a commercial level. And, while the first thermos products contained a glass flask inside, the American brand Stanley developed and sold steel vacuum flasks that were more resilient than their glass counterparts.
Chinese vacuum flasks in the USSR
While the Soviet Union produced its vacuum flasks, they were mostly utilitarian and didn't look aesthetically pleasing. Their Chinese cousins, on the other hand, boasted beautiful colors and gorgeous flowers, dragons, and animals, which quickly helped them occupy the Soviet kitchens as an element of decor that was also functional. The 1-3 liter capacity and the ability to keep the tea hot for around 12 hours made the thermos ideal for taking it on a long trip to the countryside. The flasks also found active use among sports tourists.
My father earned a medal of recognition for sports tourism, hiking across Southern Siberia for over a hundred kilometers for several days during his youth in the Soviet times. Insulating flasks were a necessity during the cold times of the year.
Sports tourism in the USSR shares similarities with the adventure tourism in the USA. It's goal is to hone a person's survival skillset and physical heath by navigating and surviving in nature, often traversing mountains, rivers and other natural obstacles.
Most Chinese vacuum flasks imported to the USSR were made by Beijing Deer 鹿牌, also known as the Deer Brand or "Олень" (Olen'. Rus.: deer), founded in Beijing in the 60s. By far the most common were the red flasks with flowers. They had an aluminum cap that was also used as a cup. Unfortunately, the Deer flasks had two major flaws. The glass flask inside the aluminum thermos would easily break if not handled with care. The second flaw was in the closing mechanism.
The Deer flasks used cork stoppers to seal the container. The lack of a screw cap in most Chinese thermoses was because they used a glass flask, and the technology for screwing glassware with reusable lids did not exist either in the Soviet Union or in China at the time. This meant that the flasks were not to be turned upside down. This nonetheless didn't stop them from becoming so popular.
Being part of the Communist bloc, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia imported the Chinese-made vacuum flasks, which is why they can still be found in some households. It was only after the fall of the Communist regimes and the opening of the local economies to international trade that other brands began appearing in the local households, such as the aforementioned German Thermos or the Japanese Tiger.
The re-emergence of the Deer
Chinese tea culture began to rise in Russia (and other countries with a large Russian-speaking population) around the 2010s thanks to a combination of factors. Chinese tea is no longer restricted to fancy tea clubs but is enjoyed by thousands of people in all sorts of settings: in the countryside, at a house party, or in a music studio. Many tea vendors from Eastern Europe traveled to China and saw the local farmers and vendors use old vacuum flasks when making tea in remote locations. Upon their arrival back to their countries, many began using the Chinese vintage flasks.
Whether they brought these as a souvenir or took out the dusty Deer from their parents' attic is unclear, but what interests me more is why they decided to use the fragile and outdated glass flask instead of the much more convenient modern flasks. My theory is that it's the combination of Soviet nostalgia and the desire to replicate the "authentic" Chinese habits of making tea.
Nostalgia & globalization
Living in Germany for over ten years now and being active in the tea community, I found it interesting to discover that my German tea friends have never seen vintage Chinese vacuum flasks. On the other hand, the Deer has often served as a topic for bonding between me and the Chinese or Eastern European guests at our tea space, becoming something of a shared cultural code.
Eastern European tea culture has been actively evolving for the past 15 years, combining the Southern Chinese tradition with local socio-economic realities and shaping it into its own cultural entity. More and more local artisans develop their unique styles of ceramics and accessories around the new tradition, and the methods of preparation evolve to match the local tastes. This new culture around tea doesn't have any name or a clear definition, however, I would argue that it shares a resemblance with the Taiwanese Tea Art movement ChaYi (茶藝/茶艺).
ChaYi was born in the 70s out of the fusion of the Guangdong and Japanese tea traditions. It rejects the rigid following of strict rules that the Japanese tea ceremony is known for while striving for beauty in the performance of tea-making and the aesthetics that accompany it. ChaYi encourages each tea person to develop their own style of tea-making and decorate the aesthetics of the tea session to fit the needed mood, occasion, or theme. This free-spirited approach to rules and the encouragement of innovation and individuality is what we can find in the emerging tea tradition of Eastern Europe.
For me, the Deer vacuum flasks are a perfect symbol of this emerging tea culture, because they bring together Eastern Europe and China and are detached from the "traditional ethnic cultures" as a product of the Communist era. They also represent visiting my relatives in the village and returning to the "roots," which is another major aspect of this new Eastern European tea culture.
Picture Open Source: https://russiainphoto.ru/