Shall the few remaining beauty spots of Shanghai’s dwindling rural district be sacrificed to hideous advertisement hoardings ? That is the issue placed before the public by the Automobile Club of China, who have acted on a growing revulsion for these hoardings and have asked the Municipal Council to take steps to remove them. 
In the last few years, the whole of the Western District has gradually changed. The trend of residential developments has been almost exclusively confined to that district, mainly because of the desire of residents to get out into the country. With the commercial districts of Shanghai situated near the Bund, imposing in its architectural structure and plan, but sadly dull and grey when the brief respite between office hours and the week end holiday brings the need for some freshness of nature to clear away the cobwebs of daily routine, it is only a fair demande of residents that some untouched and undefiled piece of countryside should be reserved for them and their pleasure. 

Craving for Nature. The trees that line the roads in the West are a demonstration of the people’s need for some touch of nature to break the monotony of stone and brick. Farther west is Jessfield Park, one of the most delightful rural retreats to be found anywhere, even in England. Beyond is the rolling countryside extending to Hungjao, with a family good road running round it and free access to a pretty stretch of country where the tired resident can derive some visual satisfaction and aesthetic pleasure, and fill the craving for color which the mind needs after a week’s work. A resident can get either a good walk in the country, a stroll among the trees or a decent motor ride to blow off the cares of office. 
Look at the picture to-day. He hardly leaves Bubbling Well Road before he finds some gigantic hoarding, often a crude piece of Chinese artistry, telling him that somebody’s cigarettes are the best. At Jessfield Park the picture is still more bizarre. When he leaves the undulating lawns, the pretty Chinese pond, the trees, the flowers, the shrubberies and the soothing sylvan delights of this little corner of nature, he is assailed on all parts by hoardings advising him to buy brandy, soap, baby food, and all sorts of commodities, which shriek out their virtues and claims to popular purchase in big letters and glaringly colored backgrounds. 

Rubicon Frightfulness. Round the Rubicon a miniature advertisement panorama unfolds itself to the motorist trying to get away from the rush of business. Gasoline, tyres, cigarettes, baby food, cocoa, all demand his attention, no matter which way he looks. His view of the country is often obscured by some ugly hoarding standing at the roadside. He is prey to a campaign of frightfulness  he complains, almost as deadly as the campaign which scared the fair fields of France and Flanders in the war. His remaining bit of rural beauty is mixed up with the blatancy of modern publicity which aims at knocking him down standing on his chest, so to speak, and howling in his ears the ceaseless catcalls of advertisement inducement which can be heard above the roar of city life. 
These hideous hoardings are in themselves a great danger, and have caused not a few accidents. Shanghai has a big equestrian public and the Rubicon district is a favorite area for riding. Judge of the effect of some glaringly colored hoarding on a highly strung pony. It is a fact that when one hoarding on Hungjao Road was erected a pony shied at is and threw his rider who suffered severe injuries. Other riders have had unpleasant times. 

Town and Country. Why should one be pursued into the country by these inevitable heralds of manufacturers and agents? Propounded in this is a fair question, and one which does not aim at such an inanimity as trying to stop advertising. Broadly speaking, among the hundreds of people who condemn these rural hoardings there is a frank realization that advertising is a necessity and that it would be foolish to think of banning it. Few people object to these hoardings being confined to the towns. Shanghai is no city beautiful. It is an ugly conglomeration of the architectural ideas of two civilisations and many different countries. Its layout is not ideal : it is composed chiefly of appendages of different ages welded, in most cases haphazardly, to the previous structure leaving an ugly unstandardized mass. 

Country must be reserved. In addition to this, Shanghai is an intense commercial city living on business and nobody claims for it any higher purpose than this. It is no garden village. Therefore advertising is inextricably bound up with business, and there is little objection to hoardings in the town. But no one defends the existence of these hoardings in the country. There is limit to all things and the limit to advertisement hoardings should be the top of Bubbling Well Road. It it nothing short of vandalism to cover up the countryside with them. The farther Western District is the only stretch of country Shanghai residents have to which may be appended to the title « beauty spot ». It must be preserved. In the letter from the Automobile Club to the Council, the following districts are selected as being the most disfigured by hoardings: Blydenburg’s Turn corner of Avenue Joffre and Siccawei Road), corner of Hungjao, Warren and Great Western Road Extension and Jessfield Park vicinity. The Settlement can ill afford to make its roads less attractive than they already are, and our Committee fells that public spirited action is called for to bring about the removal of the hoardings ; failing which other action could be considered with a view to rendering cost of maintenance of this form of advertisement prohibitive by taxation », the letter stated. The Council were sympathetic but felt that any interference regarding the hoarding at Blydenburg’s Turn would not be reasonably jstified. They promised to respond sympathetically to any practical proposal the Club should make, but suggested a direct appeal to the advertisers themselves.
 
An Agent Defence. That is the Council’s views. Listen to the views of one of the advertising agencies. Mr. Carl Crow, of the Carl Crow Inc. interviewed by a SUNDAY TIMES reporter, admitted that some hoardings were ugly and marred the landscape, but he pointed out that no good advertising agent would countenance such. Advertiser’s business as to attract public attention and not to repel it : if any advertisement hoarding offended public taste it would do more harm to the advertiser thatn induce people to buy his wares. That as the reason why his firm had done all they could to beautify their hoardings, by making them fit into the landscape, and arranging little plots of turf and nicely-painted railings around them. 
Regarding the three hoardings at Blydenburg’s turn, which belong to the Carl Corw Inc. Mr. Crow defended them and claimed that they fitted into the background. They were the first experiments in embodying the features of Chinese yamen roof structure in to hoarding sand created a much better impression that the dreary fence and utpidy threes which were there before they were erected. The design, he said, was not yet finished. It was his intention to arrange a square of turn in front of them, plant shrubs and flowers in front and rail them off in order to preserve the rural color of the site. 

Sometimes An Improvement. Mr Crow said that in a good many cases hoardings were actually an improvement on the former surroundings. Instead of dirty Chinese houses and shops, with the front littered with refuse, broken and ill-repaired fences, there were in many cases neat, artistic advertisements which covered up what was really an ugly blotch. A house or shop nearby would get a new coat of paint and would be decorated to make it cleaner than before and would be really an improvement.
His firm, he pointed out made a definite rule not to erect hoardings on country highways, on the principle that they might give offense, as they have done in Shanghai, and prove detrimental to their purpose. This applied also to their national business. Their agents were prohibited from erected hoardings or sticking posters on city walls, temples or any place of historical or picturesque importance. A food advertising agent was not a vandal, he said. A lot of the hoardings around the Rubicon were placed indiscriminately by Chinese concerns, and these included some of the worst eyesores. 
He defended the artistic merits of some advertisement on hoardings and also they utility, pointing out that they paid tax to the Council and thereby swelled the funds. Coming neared to the city, he said that a good many hoardings actually introduced a bit of colour into the scene and relieved the drab and monotonous background but the effect was spoiled by the activities of « snipers » - Chinese who stuck up posters in any place and covered a blank wall with advertising appeals without permission or discrimination.