As the Chinese were said to favor British cigarettes using "Virginia yellow tobacco" rather than "blended" and aromatic cigarettes used by the most popular American brands, the former, therefore, represented the majority of advertisements during the entire period.* Yet Shanghai smokers were offered an ever-widening array of brands and sorts of tobacco between the early 1920s and the late 1940s.

* Source: Crow, 1937: 5-8.