By Zhu Lina

　　JIANG Qigang's interest in collecting can be traced back to curiosity about his own family history.

　　Trying to imagine the life led by his banker grandfather and rebellious father who left home to join the Communist resistance, he searched for artifacts from the past, from china and furniture to cameras, pictures and posters.

　　His enthusiasm carried him on until he purchased an apartment near Shanghai Stadium and set up the "Unique Hill Studio," taking the name "Unique Hill" from a liberal translation of his given name, "Qigang".

　　He keeps part of his collections there, mostly posters from the 1920s-1940s, and gives regular exhibitions on various themes. Making up a large part of his exhibited collection are elaborately painted pictures of the "beauties" of old Shanghai.

　　One of his most cherished exhibits is a drawing that depicts Chinese women playing billiards. They are in late-Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) costumes and hairstyles and show their bound little feet.

　　"You can't help but wonder how Western trends influenced Chinese household in such an early age," said Jiang.

　　A miscellany

　　Sitting among the "beauty" portraits that cover the walls of two rooms, 41-year-old Jiang often daydreams about the women portrayed, as if he had gone back to the past, when Shanghai had just established itself as the commercial centre of East Asia.

　　Jiang presented an exhibition of old advertisements several months ago, illustrating the development of advertising techniques and media in the time before television. "The major advertising medium of that time was posters, magazine covers and newspapers," Jiang said.

　　One poster depicted two young women in cheongsam. One looked upset - her dress looked messy and faint in colour - while the other had a bright smile and boasted that her clothes were made of "Authentic Indanthrene", a pigment trademarked by a German company.

　　Insgroupsto lengthen the life of their commercials, businessmen also printed calendars and brandnames and produced the so-called "yuefen pai", which used to be stuck on the walls of ordinary households as well as in shops.

　　In some of the calendars, the solar terms of the Chinese traditional calendar were clearly marked. "The Chinese national capitalists became mature back then," Jiang said. "They adopted Western commercial methods to promote themselves." The posters used to be sent out with the morning newspapers.

　　Jiang often visits Zhejiang, Anhui and Shandong provinces to search for old posters. "Garbage collectors, the elderly, and houses to be dismantled" - they are the first sources. Later, the posters appear in antique markets and the prices rose. Jiang didn't want to talk much about himself, worried that with his reputation building as a poster collector, people would raise their prices when selling to him.

　　"Large amounts of information about earlier times are included in these posters," he said. "Museums lack material covering this aspect. My work is also to rescue cultural relics." He pointed to a poster for a cigarette advertisement depicting a woman pilot. "Can you believe that Women's Liberation had become a hot subject at that time?"

　　A clear picture

　　Putting the posterssintoschronological order, people can see changes in fashion, when cheongsam became tighter and more sexy. Jiang has even collected some cheongsams, including a particularly precious example with metallic thread wovensintosthe cloth.

　　Shanghai culture evolved after absorbing the customs and aesthetics of immigrants. In early posters, there are structures of Western oil paintings, except the portrayed face became Chinese. Also, the posters featured backgrounds showing European Art Deco.

　　"People paid much attention to details at that time. You can feel the slow rhythm of life reading the pictures, but now people can't live so easily and leisurely," Jiang said.

　　With the market surge after nostalgia became fashionable, fake old posters began to appear. "The paper is different after many years exposure in the air under certain humidity and temperature conditions. You can smell it," he said. "They can make it look old, but it is not worth the cost." Printed posters are not auctioned in the salesroom, even if they date back 50 years.

　　The printing technique also shows strong indications of the time. "Chromo-lithography" was the technique used,swhereserrors on the printing plate cause mistakes in the posters which can be a happy surprise to collectors.

　　Modern printing skills were brought by missionaries from the West, who printed religious pamphlets. The missionaries trained painters and technicians among local orphans whom they helped in Tusanwan near Xujiahui.

　　In 1979 Jiang bought the first piece for his collection during a tour outside Shanghai. It was a tea tray from the Song Dynasty (960-1279). "It is now an antique according to the State law."

　　Later, when he graduated from college to work in a lumber company, he started to collect old furniture. In the mid-1980s when photography came moresintosfashion, he bought old cameras for fun.

　　The balance sheet

　　Jiang has a full-time job working as a consultant and he sells replicas of old posters to visitors to his studio but he finds it difficult to keep it running with regular shows. Fortunately, he doesn't have to pay rent as the estate was purchased years ago at a reasonable price.

　　"The price has risen a great deal," Jiang said. "I could just sell this studio or rent it out for business if I simply wanted to make good money. I like the cultural and spiritual element embodied in the colours of the time, the ebb and flow of society."

　　Jiang's grandparents had a library building in Hangzhou. It was a four-storey building with a steel structure. After 1949, when the State called on the people to set up a collective library, thousands of books were donated. Jiang still has a picture of his great-grandfather with Chinese literature master Lu Xun.

　　His great-grandfather consulted Lu about his future career - whether he should study medicine or arts. "Lu Xun wrote back to my great-grandfather, saying that with his weak looks, people were not likely to trust him as a doctor."

　　Jiang refused to collect posters or other relics from the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). "It was a time when humanity died out. I didn't want to see those things, let alone make a collection."

　　Jiang now sits in an antique chair in his studio, surrounded by the beauties of the past, living with his life-long passion for Shanghai's past glory.