This set of six maps show the luminous and/or "eccentric" advertisements (kiosks, pillars, clocks, balloons, etc) recorded in the Shanghai Municipal Archives (foreign settlements) between 1905-1943. These maps tend to confirm Sanger's observations in 1921 that Shanghai was quite an "dark" city before the 1920s. Luminous and "eccentric"  advertisements expanded in Shanghai in the late 1920s and above all the 1930s, through the introduction of "neon light" as a new technique of lighting. Illuminated shopsigns and billboards also offered more "classifical" forms of luminous advertisements.

Thiese maps eventually reveal the nocturnal face of Shanghai, and the efforts made by professional advertising men to "illuminate" and "entertain" Shanghai by creative methods of advertising, which rarely meet with municipal authorities' approval.