“How one city transformed advertising into art.” ~ Article 2
From Experiment to Identity
The first article explored the early artistic language that emerged in northern China before Shanghai became the center of Chinese advertising art. Those experiments established the vocabulary.
Shanghai provided the audience—and the stage.
To understand why Shanghai transformed the advertising poster, we must first understand the city itself.
A City Looking Toward the Future
Walk through Shanghai in the 1920s or 1930s and you would have encountered a city unlike any other in Asia. Electric streetlights illuminated busy commercial avenues. Department stores displayed imported fashions beside Chinese silks. Jazz drifted from hotel ballrooms while trams carried office workers, merchants, artists, and tourists through streets where Chinese tradition met international modernity.
Shanghai was not simply wealthier than other Chinese cities. It was denser, faster, more international, and more competitive. Everywhere people looked, advertisements competed for attention. Standing still meant disappearing. Every new poster had to be more beautiful, more memorable, and more persuasive than the one beside it.
It was this extraordinary concentration of commerce, creativity, and competition that transformed Shanghai into one of the world’s great advertising capitals.
More Than Just Advertising
The images became known as 月份牌 (yuefenpai), commonly associated with calendar and commercial advertising. At first glance they can appear simple enough: a beautiful woman, an elegant interior, perhaps a packet of cigarettes or another product, often accompanied by a calendar.
But these images did more than advertise. They were carefully constructed visions of contemporary China. They invited viewers into worlds of sophistication, prosperity and confidence. The product was part of a larger promise: modern life itself.
Shanghai’s finest posters sold more than products and services—they sold elegance, confidence, and the promise of a modern lifestyle.
When Art Met Commerce
Creating these images required far more than commercial painting. Many of the artists responsible had received formal artistic training and combined traditional Chinese painting with Western realism, photography and advances in color lithography.
The result was a distinctive new visual language for commercial art . Faces became more natural. Clothing reflected changing fashions. Architecture revealed contemporary interiors. Lighting, perspective and composition borrowed freely from both East and West.
The posters sold products, but they also documented a society redefining itself—changing ideas of beauty, the role of women, family aspirations, and the meaning of success. Today they offer an unparalleled visual history of Republican Shanghai.
The Artists Behind the Images
Shanghai advertising art was not created by a single painter, but by an extraordinary community of artists whose work filled homes, shops and businesses across China.
Among the best known are painters such as Xie Zhiguang, celebrated for his graceful female figures, and Jin Meisheng, whose elegant compositions helped define the visual language of the genre. Alongside them worked many other accomplished artists, some well documented, others known today primarily through signatures and surviving works.
Each brought a distinct approach. Some emphasized fashion; others atmosphere, realism, decorative design or the product itself. Together they helped transform commercial advertising into a distinctive art form.
Zhang Dihan and the 1928 Shenbao Competition
Zhang Dihan (張荻寒) is a particularly well-documented example. Born in Zhejiang in 1904, he trained at the Commercial Press, worked for the Shanghai advertising pioneer Carl Crow, and later became a resident illustrator for Huacheng Tobacco Company. In 1928, more than 20,000 Shenbao readers voted on advertisements submitted by ten companies in the newspaper’s only known advertising-illustration competition. A Zhang Dihan advertisement for Huacheng’s My Dear cigarettes won Second Prize, with cash awards and silver medals presented to the advertiser and artist. MI-2900 dates from the same year and demonstrates the refined female figure, decorative border and discreet product display associated with Zhang’s Huacheng work; current evidence does not establish that this particular poster was the prize-winning design. (Research source: Little Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising in the R.O.C., 2026.)
(L) MI 2176 Unknown Artist, Toilet Soap Advertisement, c. 1930s Commercial artists blended glamour, fashion, and product branding into a new vision of aspirational consumer life.
(Center) MI 2101 — Xie Zhiguang, Modern Lady in a Fur Coat, c. 1930s. Elegant interior settings and fashionable dress helped define the visual language of Shanghai modernity.
(R) MI 2113 — Jin Meisheng, Cigarette Advertisement, c. 1930s. Advertising posters transformed everyday products into symbols of sophistication, romance, and urban refinement.
A Collection That Tells the Story
One poster can be admired for its beauty. A collection reveals something more. It allows comparisons. “How did different artists combine art and advertising?” How did fashions evolve over time? How did colour palettes change? Which companies commissioned particular styles? What happened as Shanghai itself changed?
Because Bai Win holds works by many artists across different studios and periods, the collection reveals the evolution of an artistic movement rather than the career of a single artist.
(L) MI-2100 · Xie Zhiguang. Interior elegance and refined realism became hallmarks of Xie Zhiguang’s celebrated art.
(2nd from L) MI-2185 Two elegantly dressed women demonstrate the diversity of composition found in Shanghai’s advertising posters.
(3rd from L) MI-2174 · Jin Meisheng Ornate Art Deco borders and graceful figures transformed commercial advertising into decorative art.
(R) MI-2114 · Mei Yutian. Full-length fashion illustrations captured the modern sophistication of Shanghai’s cosmopolitan era.
The Beginning of a Journey
Shanghai did not invent illustrated advertising. It transformed it into one of Asia’s great artistic traditions.
Nearly a century later, these posters remain more than beautiful works of commercial art. They preserve the aspirations of a city reinventing itself.
In the articles that follow, we’ll meet the artists, examine the products and companies they promoted, explore the women and worlds they portrayed, and uncover the stories behind these extraordinary images.
Curator’s Assessment
Every collection has a moment where individual objects begin to speak to one another. Seen alone, a Shanghai advertising poster is a beautiful work of commercial art. Seen together, they reveal something much larger—a city redefining beauty, commerce, and everyday life in real time.
That is the strength of the Bai Win Collection. It allows us to study not only individual masterpieces, but the evolution of an artistic movement.
From the Curator’s Desk
Adam McMillan 年安瀾
Curator, Bai Win Collection
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