BEIJING: Thirty years ago the posters on the Shanghai public transport system screamed Maoist slogans. For the past 10 years they have been hard-sell advertisements for cosmetic surgery clinics and cars. But from next month a more poetic tone will be struck by verses from Blake, Wordsworth, Michael Bullock and Kathleen Jamie.

In a sign of changing priorities, the Shanghai metro will display poems by four British poets in a groundbreaking cultural exchange between the world’s two most popular languages and its oldest and newest subway networks.

Under the deal, which took years to thrash out, the London Underground — which has displayed poems for 20 years — is displaying lines from some of China’s great wordsmiths: Li Bai, Du Pu and Po Chu-i.

Next month the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, will launch a similar programme in Shanghai with Wordsworth’s Daffodils, Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, Jamie’s The Blue Boat and Bullock’s Butterfly.

Foregoing thousands of pounds of advertising revenue, the Shanghai metro will display extracts from these poems on 500 carriage hoardings for at least two months.

“It is the first time that the Shanghai metro has used cultural content from a foreign country. That is why it took several years,” said Jeff Streeter, cultural and education consul of the British Council in Shanghai. “They were very cautious. They looked at the plan very carefully to make sure it was suitable.”

The Shanghai government employed a literature scholar from Fudan University to assess whether the exchange was appropriate.

In the end the main concern was not politics, but pessimism.

“The poems on the London Underground are always about death, but we want to create a more comfortable environment for our passengers,” said Song Liqiang, the chief of the Shanghai metro communist party committee. “That is why we chose the four poems we did.”

Mr Streeter, a poetry enthusiast, said he wanted the mood to be upbeat. “We want this project to reflect the final stanza of Bullock’s poem: ‘A flying flower that changes the colour of my day’.” —Dawn/The Guar-dian News Service