The article presents results of comprehensive research study of Chinese sanitary educational discourse based on materials of posters from collection of the Russian Museum of Medicine. The examined visual sources have not been previously published or analyzed as distinct phenomenon with its own specificity. The actuality of investigations is determined by revival of interest to sanitary education as means to maintain public health, as well as need for discursive analysis of methods and means of representing medicine in art within framework of different cultural and historical contexts. The purpose of the study was to build classification of Chinese sanitary educational posters and to analyze their artistic and linguistic features. The study was carried out at the intersection of museology, culturology, semiotics and discourse theory. The analysis of collection permitted to identify key thematic directions and artistic genres. The posters are dated from 1950s — period of intensive cooperation between the USSR and the People's Republic of China. The subject-matter of posters — disease prevention, service to workers, peasants and soldiers, unification of traditional Chinese and Western medicine and integration of health care with mass movements — correspond to goals established on All-Chinese National health care conferences in 1950 and 1952. The genre originality of Chinese sanitary posters reflects interweaving of artistic traditions of Chinese primitivistic style and New Year benevolences, depictions of people against the background of nature and calligraphy with ideological directives actual for that period.

Russian Medical Museum, health education, Chinese poster, health education discourse, Chinese health care..