24. December 2025

Printed at the height of Hankow’s treaty-port era, this 1932 Christmas supplement of the Hankow Herald from our collection depicts a city shaped by foreign concessions, international and local banks, and a distinctive blend of expatriate and Chinese urban culture along the Yangtze.

15. December 2024

This ca. 1920s postcard from our collection shows a food stall somewhere in China or possibly Hong Kong. The advertisement posters on the wall emphasize just how aggressively cigarettes were mass-marketed in old China. At the peak of its activities in China in 1937, the British American Tobacco Company (BAT) manufactured and distributed approximately a stunning 55 billion machine-made cigarettes to Chinese consumers per year.

30. October 2023

Halloween Special! Here's how foreign brands and local businesses advertised for the celebration in Shanghai in October 1938. Clippings from an original North-China Daily News paper in the MOFBA collection.

04. June 2023

This ca. 1925 passbook for the provision store Dombey & Son from our collection, is the equivalent to the “order history” tab of modern ecommerce or grocery delivery apps. A unique glimpse at how advanced retail was in Shanghai already back then. Dombey & Son was a high-class grocery store established in 1899 and the location on 143 Bubbling Well Rd (today’s Nanjing West Rd) existed since at least 1909. As Shanghai grew into an international metropolis the address was renumbered...