Public Education Posters – Part 1

Note: I am very interested in visual communication and the use of comics and other images as educative tools. Around China, we have seen many posters meant to inform the public on issues from health to disaster response. These are quite distant from the propaganda posters of the past, with cartoons replacing the raised fists and muscular proletariat. I have questioned the effectiveness of many, and failed to comprehend the point of a few. This will be the first of a series in which I examine the posters, murals, and other media we see around us.

Of all such posters we have seen, my certain favorites were found on a stretch of wall in an unpopular part of Yichang, in Hubei province. There is no indication of who is responsible for their creation, or their message, so I can only assume it was the local government. I envy the artist commissioned to draw number 6.

Click on Image to Enlarge, Use Arrows to Scroll While the art is rough and the tone is a bit silly, all six posters deal with very common issues in China – spitting, pollution, littering, etc. These situations may seem obvious to outsiders (and there a is peculiarly high number of foreigners featured as appalled bystanders, which perhaps betrays some level of cultural insecurity), but they represent a genuine attempt to change mass habits. Looking only at the images, paying no attention to the text, I am unsure if the messages would be clear. Many questions immediately arise. What, for example, is the man in the hat putting into a garbage can, if that is in fact a garbage can? Is the man on crutches putting paper into a toilet – and, why is that man on crutches? Why isn’t the person in number 6 doing his business on the sidewalk, or in the city in the background, where that is actually likely to happen and pose a greater threat to sanitation? The text helps to explain a little. Here are the basic messages, in order:

1. Don’t spit on the ground.
2. Don’t take those suffering from infectious diseases to public places.
3. Don’t shout, make loud noises, or create disturbances in public.
4. Plant and appreciate trees.
5. Don’t throw your refuse on the ground – put it in the proper receptacles.
6. Don’t defecate or urinate on the ground.

As for the overall effectiveness, that is impossible to say. We came across these particular posters about four years ago, and have not been back to that city for almost as long – perhaps it is now a place of dazzling cleanliness and comfort. However, I can testify that these problems still occur daily in other cities in other parts of the country, most of which have similar education campaigns on their own walls. For example, not a day passes that we do not look out our window and see at least one person (usually taxi drivers) urinating on the wall across the street. But that wall is covered with advertisements for local businesses, not with anything instructional.