My mother grew up in the European part of Shanghai, China, in the 1930’s until her family emigrated to the US before World War II. I have a copy of her older sister’s high school yearbook, from June 1937, and in it I found some images that may be of interest here.
My American yearbooks 30+ years later certainly didn’t have ads, but the Public School for Girls, which I believe was an English school although located in the French Concession, certainly accepted advertising. Even cigarette ads! Quite a few of the ads had sophisticated graphics and copy, but the two car ads in the yearbook kept it simple. Dodge, above was merely “dependable”. (Apologies for the added graffiti, probably courtesy of my then-ten-year-old mom.)
Ford was a little more verbose, but still made modest claims. The dealership principal was Freddie Bills, hence the lack of apostrophe in the name. I learned more about it here. Apparently as recently as 2017 it was still a dealership, but now for Skoda. By the way. these are color scans, not sepia-toned. Either the yearbook was printed this way, or the paper and ink have aged gracefully.
Another ad: for sale, 4 wheels and a motor!
“Bubbling Well Road”. What a poetic street name.
Most American yearbooks in the ’60s were full of ads for local businesses, generally showing students working in the stores or shopping in the stores.
I like your Mom’s imagination!
“My American yearbooks 30+ years later certainly didn’t have ads”
Perhaps Yearbook ads are uncommon now, but they were popular back in the sixties, particularly in small Midwest towns. There’s even a dedicated website for the automotive ads:
http://annualmobiles.blogspot.com/
(A tip O’ the hat to the “Just a Car Guy” website)
I can tell you my yearbooks had ads in the 1990s, too.
A lot of those ads used students as props, both in the photos and in the descriptions. Here’s one from our local (Virginia) high school from 1972:
Were the Europeans of Shanghai a particularly wealthy lot? Where I grew up, the idea of someone who had just graduated high school buying a new car was unheard of.
If not, maybe both these dealers’ kids were in the class and they got shaken down to buy an ad? So they just forked over the dough and wrote whatever?
Generally, exapts do it for two reasons: the money and the experience.
When I was a younger man, I was an expat living in Asia. I lived a lifestyle that would not have been possible at the time in Canada, circa 1990. The experience I had under my belt put my in good shape when I finally returned in 2004, young family in tow.
It is also an amazing experience to live in a completely different culture: unruly, chaotic Korea was a blast for a young man with a pocket full of money.
The reason I returned was schools. The school that had this yearbook would have cost a pretty penny to attend. Hence the well heeled adverts.
I knew of a few people who got new cars for HS graduation presents, certainly not common of course. However I’d consider these ads for the dealership, who paid for them who likely also dealt in used cars and that was a little more common to buy a used car for your kid going off to college. Plus they can also hope that the kid that graduates today will remember that dealer when they are ready to buy a new car in a few years.
It seemed like there were a few kids in my high school who bought brand new cars, or their parents bought one for them, but it wasn’t all that common. A few kids, I think, fell into the common car salesman’s trap of focusing only on the monthly payment and not the total cost. “See, you really can afford the payments on a new Caviler on your fast food wages if you finance it over 48 months…”
Edited to add: I used the Caviler in my example because I’m pretty sure I remember a girl in one of my classes talking about buying a brand new one on her own. It was memorable to me because I found it kind of shocking that one of my peers was buying a brand new car, as I had no idea how she could afford it.
Most of the Europeans living in the Shanghai International Settlement pre-WWII were pretty well-off. Think Christian Bale’s home in Empire of the Sun.
The “Public School for Girls” suggests that it was a private, fee paying school if it was English run, so really for the wealthy.
I graduated from high school in the US in the early ‘70’s and our yearbooks had no ads. Our kids graduated in the last ten years, and I don’t recall ads, but maybe I just took them for granted.
Many Americans/Europeans in 1930’s Shanghai were wealthy … my grandparents were … but not all. And not all were expats in the modern sense. In particular, many Russian Jews had escaped persecution by moving to Siberia, then China. Unless they moved on to the US, Canada, or Israel, the frying pan became the fire, as it were, in China by 1948. Finally, wealthy or not, I’m quite sure that NONE of these kids had their own cars in 1937. But many did have drivers.
Very interesting post, and a reminder of the international reach of the Big Three (and others) even back then.
“June 1937” widened my eyes a little bit—just a month before this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident
Henry Ford Museum has a few images of Ford’s Shanghai presence, this one captioned as 1936 cars damaged in transit:
Re: Marco Polo Bridge and the Sino-Japanese War … I wouldn’t be here without those events. Or I’d be driving a Great Wall Wingle instead of a Toyota Tacoma.
I’ve seen ads in old Suburban Pittsburgh area High school year books that wouldn’t have any logical demographic connection to the students, Like roofing companies, Real estate agents and such along with some car dealers and gas stations. (in addition to the more reasonable record stores, delis and ice cream joints). I think these were placed as local boosterism to generate good will in the district, And who knows 15 years later the student in a nostalgic mood is going through his old annual, might decide to call on that local roofer from the ad to fix up that shack he just bought from the realtor on the last page!
My yearbooks (Class of 1972) had no ads,but my daughters’ did (classes of 2006,2007, and 2009). Their high
school is in a Texas town/city of about 70,000.
From what I have read about prewar China, it is interesting that ther was no Buick ad, given that car’s popularity among the affluent. Or maybe those yearbooks were like the ones of my experience where advertisers tend to be businesses with some kind of family connection to the school and consider it more of a contribution than a real ad.
I know that Buick is popular now in China … in fact I have a whole album of Buick’s in China that I took on my last visit a few years ago … but I didn’t know that dated back before the war. My grandfather drove Citroens there. His last car in the US was a slant six Dodge Dart Swinger.
It was my understanding that a large reason for Buick’s modern popularity is that they were very prestigious cars in pre-1949 China. Those old straight eight Buicks seem to still be paying dividends in that part of the world.
Dman –
We should collaborate on a re-do of my CC about Buicks and other American cars in prewar China, from almost exactly four years ago. A feature on Buicks in China then and now should be interesting.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cc-global/cc-global-american-cars-in-pre-communist-china-the-east-is-red-white-blue/
I actually commented on that piece you did, but had forgotten all about it. I’ll contact you offline.
A early foray into globalism which probably didn’t raise any ruckus considering its origins.