Shanghai: June 2: Museums Galore

On Tuesday, June 2, 2009, I spent the day on my feet hitting Shanghai's major museums, taking these pictures on the way.

After breakfast at home (which Di Yin bought at the market half a block away from our apartment complex), I headed out. Taking the subway, I transferred trains in the Shanghai Railway Station. Like many large interchanges, it's composed of the usual long corridors with booths selling low-end stuff. My second train let me off at the even larger People's Square (Renmin Square) exchange in the center of downtown. This exchange had lots of real shops and higher-end stuff. A sign of how big this station is: it has 20 different exits!

Once downtown, I first explored People's Park (Renmin Park), then entered the small Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. (The "square" is more park than square/plaza.) Its exhibit, Merging Emerging Art, Utopia and Virtual Reality, was decent and not as new-age-y as I worried it would be. I spent 30 minutes there.

I visited the Shanghai Art Museum next. Of note: I saw well-done drawings on scrolls. I especially liked the impressive landscapes. I also saw an exhibit by Kimura Ihei of realistic Japanese photography. In addition, there was an exhibit of artwork from Antwerp. While I liked most of the old art (a la old masters), I didn't like most of the new, modern stuff. I spent 60 minutes in this museum.

After grabbing lunch at a famous sheng jian bao (dumpling) shop, I went to Shanghai's most famous museum, the Shanghai Museum. It was a good museum: though I've never been curious about old artifacts when I saw them in other museums, this museum managed to present and explain them in a way that kept my interest. Furthermore, the museum provided a good quality audio tour, handy educational handouts, and lots of detailed descriptions by each item, always with an English translation. The stars of the museums collection are its ancient bronzes (mostly used to stored liquids) and its ancient sculptures (mostly Buddhist), but it also included exhibits on ceramics/porcelain (it's neat seeing how Chinese ceramics evolved over the millennia), calligraphy, Chinese painting (a display comparable to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts), seals (meh), jade carvings (eh), furniture (I like the incredible detail of Qing dynasty pieces), and coins (eh, but the key- and spade-shaped coins were neat). I spent a bit over three hours there.

Returning home, I met Di Yin and walked to a Shanghainese place for dinner. We had one very good dish; the others were merely fine.