This advertising poster from our collection tells of an incredible streak of bad luck for the German pharma giant Bayer during a both glamorous and troublesome period of history in the Middle Kingdom.
The 1930s marked the first “Golden Period” of Chinese cinema and catapulted its key performers to superstardom. In 1933, the newspaper Star Daily conducted China's first public poll for the most popular movie stars with Hu Die “Butterfly” Wu (胡蝶) as the runaway winner with 21,334 votes, more than twice as many as the first runner-up Chen Yumei, and almost three times the votes her friend Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉) received. Hu Die was crowned China's first "Movie Queen", but Ruan...