Shanghai and the modern city

Treaty ports, advertising posters and Art Deco in Shanghai.

After the Opium War Shanghai was opened as a treaty port in 1843 and became China's largest city. In the 1920s and 1930s Art Deco buildings went up along the Bund, and calendar posters with modern women advertised cigarettes and soap.

The empire fell in 1911, and the new republic sought modern forms for clothing, furniture and graphics, between tradition and Western models.