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A future that never was in China

A touring collection of Mao-era propaganda art marks an anniversary China would rather forget
Jessica Meyers
June 12, 2 016

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A poster from the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre titled Warmly Hail the Successful Opening of the 4th Peoples Congress, 1971. (Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre)

In a basement in an aging residential complex tucked away in Shanghais former French Concession, a short walk from fresh
baguettes and salons with $80 haircuts, sits Chinas most signicant public collection of propaganda art: thousands of posters with
beaming, red-cheeked workers and reverent portraits of Mao Zedong, an ode to a particular brand of artistry and a reminder of a
history the countrys leaders only selectively acknowledge.
One poster reveals a strapping Chinese worker on horseback who gallops past a pudgy Brit riding an ox, an image promoting the
Great Leap ForwardMaos failed attempt in the late 1950s to industrialize China. Another depicts farmers and students grasping
Maos red book of quotations as they stretch arms upward, united in their screams for workers worldwide.
Yang Pei Ming, a 70-year-old former tour guide, started the collection two decades ago to preserve representations of the past. His
neighbours laughed when he rst placed newspaper ads for items they considered trash. The posters barely cost anything, but the
one-time stamp collector found a new passion. He set up the museum in 2002 as a one-room operation and kept it going largely
through entrance fees and poster copies. He received an official licence in 2012, after international travel guides such as Lonely
Planet took notice. TripAdvisor, the popular travel website, recently gave his museum a 2015 Travellers Choice award.

Yang Pei Ming the curator of the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre in Shanghai. (Photograph by Algirdas Bakas)

Enough foreign tourists visit the museum that the complexs security guard hands out directions. But those who survived Maos
tumultuous rule often dont want to remember, and younger generations prefer to move forward. So Yang, surrounded by 6,000
prints in his apartment-sized museum, is looking outside China to help save the revolutionary art. The 50th anniversary of the
Cultural Revolution this year presents an opening. Harvard University hopes to showcase some of his pieces, following exhibits in
Brazils Cndido Mendes University and the University of Edinburgh.
Yangs eorts are all the more striking because the collector is featuring propaganda from an era that marred his childhood and
claimed his father. Authorities dragged the elderly man away during a raid on capitalists. He never returned. You cant escape this
history, says Yang. Its there.

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