One evening in August, a lightbox poster quietly lit up on the exterior wall of the Yinzuo Shopping Mall in Shan County, Heze, Shandong. In the picture, Qian Xuesen gazes calmly, with his well-known words printed below - "Do not lose confidence; as long as you persevere, there will be results in the end." Beside it runs another caption: "They are the top stars the Chinese nation should forever look up to and remember for generations."
This was originally the mall's best-located, most expensive advertising space. A few days earlier, a huge commercial poster of some brand still hung here; now it has been replaced by the portrait of a deceased scientist. Passersby slowed their steps; some took out their phones to take pictures, and some pulled their children to stand in front of the poster, saying, "This is someone you must get to know." That night, netizens posted the scene online, and it garnered more than 100,000 likes within 24 hours. Immediately afterward, several shopping malls in downtown Heze and the Wuyue Plaza in Zibo followed suit - giant posters of meritorious scientists such as Deng Jiaxian, Qian Sanqiang, Guo Yonghuai and Yu Min appeared on the exterior walls of the cities' busiest commercial districts.
This "light-up" campaign came entirely from a spontaneous relay by businesses. Zhu Wei, the mall's operations manager, admitted that these posters were physical lightboxes, not AI effects. Half a month earlier, his team had begun planning proactively, taking down regular commercial ads. "Exterior-wall advertising is mainly about revenue, but enterprises must shoulder responsibility," he said matter-of-factly - not like making publicity, more like stating something self-evident.
What moves people most about Shandong's "light-up" campaign is its spontaneity. There was no organizational arrangement, no planning document - one mall took the lead, others followed, and it spread like a relay. Such grassroots tribute has more vitality than any administrative order, because it comes from genuine emotional identification.
To make scientists, laborers and ordinary heroes true "regulars" in urban public spaces cannot rely on one or two occasional moments of being moved; it needs institutionalized guarantees. Governments could issue "guidelines for cultural display in urban public spaces," encouraging commercial properties to reserve public-interest content at specific times or areas, and offering policy support or positive publicity to businesses that do well. Malls could set up "public-space content committees," inviting citizen representatives and experts to participate in topic selection and vote on "who the next batch of posters features." The public could also make proposals through online platforms to put their heroes on city screens.
In recent years, public attention to scientists has been rising. After Chinese mathematicians Wang Hong and Deng Yu won the Fields Medal, discussions surged across the internet; Peking University mathematician Wei Dongyi has also won countless online fans for his pure focus on research. These phenomena show that scientists as a group do not lack public attention - what is missing is the setting for the public to "encounter them in daily life." Mall exterior walls, metro lightboxes and city screens - spaces citizens pass every day - are precisely the best carriers.
Moving scientist posters into commercial districts essentially opens up the "last mile" of spreading the spirit of science. In the past, honoring scientists relied mostly on school classrooms and museum exhibitions, with relatively fixed audiences. Malls, however, face citizens of all ages, letting ordinary people come across these national pillars while shopping, buying groceries or picking up their children from school. This silent, pervasive communication is more powerful than any grand narrative.
When Qian Xuesen's poster lit up in the night of a Shandong commercial district, it illuminated not only that scientist's face but also a plain fact: a society's value choices are often hidden in these seemingly tiny details. A city's core area is its most expensive land and also the place that best reveals its heart. Whoever you put in the spotlight means whom you esteem, whom you respect, and whom you hope the next generation will become. If the most prominent spots are forever reserved for pop celebrities and luxury ads, the city's "face" is just a shopping list; if these spots can occasionally be given to those who dedicated themselves to the nation, then the city has a soul.
Commercial advertising and public-interest posters can coexist in the city. They are not an either-or relationship but should each stay in its place, each beautiful in its own way. A city needs commercial vitality as well as spiritual benchmarks; the convenience of consumption as well as space to look up. These Shandong merchants' move may be just a beginning. It shows us that when commercial space voluntarily returns to values, when the city's "face" no longer only mirrors consumer desire but begins to illuminate faces truly worth looking up to, the city gains warmth, gains a soul, and gains reasons that make people want to stay.
