Marketing Medicine and Advertising Dreams in China, 1900–1950

Here Lu Xun, the most brilliant writer in China during the first half of the twentieth century, took a position that challenges anyone interested in advertising in Chinese history.¹ According to his analysis, advertising was traceable to one of two sources—commercial artists or society—and in his opinion the images of Chinese women then appearing in calendar posters were attributable to commercial artists rather than society. Was Lu Xun right? Was advertising wholly an expression of commercial artists’ “sick” fantasies and not at all a reflection of society at large? If so, then why did calendar posters and other