The Northern Expedition was a military campaign conducted by the National Revolutionary Army to the Beiyang Army in Southern China from 1926 to 1928. This article analyzes the images in the two pictorials headquartered separately in the North and the South, namely The Young Companion and the Pei-yang Pictorial News, which were published on the Northern Expedition. This article points out the public opinion in the Northern Expedition is not in a common aspiration of all Chinese but of a complex narrative. Specifically, the two pictorials depicted two highly differentiated images of politics: The Pei-yang Pictorial News, in Tianjin, described Pei-yang Government as an anti-communism and advocating armed administration, through a marching southward perspective. In contrast, The Young Companion, in Shanghai, portrayed the national government as a revolutionary and firmly insisting civil administration, in a heading northward perspective. The former tended to pursue newness and abandon obsolescence culturally; while the latter called for urbanization or industrialization which expressed the wish for broader participation by common people in a modern society.