Shanghai: June 16: Qibao

On Tuesday, I visited Qibao, a historic canal-town near Shanghai that's now been converted into a tourist attraction. I took these pictures.

After a long train ride and much searching (there were no directions in English to the town from the train station), I found it and its narrow streets.

The town's bridges, water, and streets are picturesque. It was fun to wander for an hour or two. There was enough of a slight breeze to make walking around in the heat okay. By the way, the town has a few small museums, but none that I was in the mood for, and none that I trusted would have enough English to bother entering.

The town's shops aren't limited to your normal tourist stuff; rather, it includes, for example, clothes, jewelry, and musical instruments. The shops feel like the stores in the middle ring around Yuyuan Garden: not the expensive outer ones, nor the touristy inner ones.

Leaving Qibao, since I was already in outer Shanghai I decided to stop by some other sites nearby. I first visited the Liu Haisu Art Museum/Gallery. Its four galleries included displays of spartan ink drawings (of people) and chalk (black only) paintings (mostly impressionist or modern). There was nothing I particularly liked. The museum wasn't worth the 2km walk from the metro station.

After the museum, I went, via a roundabout route, to the Song Qingling Mausoleum. I'd planned to visit it on the way to the museum but was too far past it before I realized it was marked on the wrong place on my map. The park surrounding the mausoleum and its attached museum was in a pleasant green space happily walled off from the surrounding roads. It was, however, disappointing: a small exhibit comprised entirely of photographs, and all labeled in Chinese. I guess all the real artifacts were moved to yesterday's renovated former residence/museum. This also certainly wasn't worth the walk.