Monday April 4th

This morning, we headed down to breakfast to see an array of several things on offer.  I didn’t have a perfect night’s sleep, but I headed to the cereal and that went down fine.  Jam on toast didn’t impress my stomach and I tried some orange juice but it was totally synthetic, possibly either cordial or diluted Sunny Delight!  It turned out that most of the orange juice served in any restaurant here was just like this, so I decided not to drink any orange juice at all for the remainder of the trip.  Stomach fairly satisfied, we left and upon exiting, I grabbed an apple on the way out to take with me for the day.  We had a ‘briefing’ about our tour, which started me worrying about a few things but nothing too bad!

 

Shanghai Museum



On the coach, we met our local guide, Lemon.  She told us some facts about Shanghai during our journey to Shanghai Museum, facts like: Shanghai has a population of over 17 million people, and the name ‘Shanghai’ means “above the sea”.  We joined the huge queue to get into the Museum, and while waiting, we were offered the opportunity to buy kites from local vendors as they were flying them.  They love their kites in China!  This one being shown was a giant red squid, and although a photo would have been good, it felt wrong to ask for a photo and not buy it..!

Inside the Museum, we had a brief security check, a bag scan, and we had to take a sip of water if we were holding a bottle, so they could see it wasn’t tainted with anything.  We were given an hour and 45 minutes to look at the 4 floors of the Museum.  It wasn’t a huge Museum, but it did have a collection of over 120,000 pieces spanning over 5,000 years!  If we had our own time, I think we would have spent about 3 – 4 hours there.  Mathew and I started at the top on floor 4 to look at Galleries of Chinese Ethnic Minorities’ Arts & Crafts (traditional dress), and Chinese Jade which was fabulous!  Some of the jade was very impressive, some having multi-layers AND in different colours focusing mostly on animals and plants, with the odd landscape carving, as well as a few small idols.  We decided to skip the currency and furniture and headed to floor 3 to see the Chinese paintings and seals, the painting gallery had motion-sensor lighting at each piece, so the lights only came on if someone was standing at a painting, which I thought was a very good idea and I don’t think I’ve seen it used before in any other Museum I’ve been to in the UK or elsewhere.

On each floor there were small themed gift shops, and on floor 3, Mathew bought a print of one of the paintings.  I looked for one with animals on but I couldn’t find one I liked.  I was sure I would find more of these within the next month!



Bronze Cauldron



We skipped floor 2 which had a gallery of ceramics and lots of places to eat, and went to the first floor which we spent the most time on, as it had a nice collection of sculptures and a pretty amazing collection of Chinese bronze artefacts.  I noticed the similarities of early Chinese sculpture with that of other cultures – I found myself comparing early wooden Chinese sculpture to Cycladic figurines!  Oh dear....haha!  But it’s true – I often find myself noticing lots of similarities in the art and design of objects created in the early stages of many civilizations, and I really find it interesting how two totally different and separate civilizations can create pretty much the same things, with almost the same patterns.



Bronze Urn



The bronze gallery was the most impressive, especially if you compare what people in the UK were making at exactly the same time.  Chinese bronze artefacts were displayed, the oldest having been made 4,800 years ago – firstly they didn’t look that old at all, they looked like they had been made yesterday.  Secondly, there was no sign of corrosion either – not even a tiny tiny smidgen - and the detail of all of these bronze artefacts was absolutely amazing.  It was hard to believe that here in the UK we were just learning to make spears and other simple weapons, while the level of craftsmanship in China was so skilled and advanced.  Of course, I left a decent amount of time for the main shop in which I made my first purchase of a couple of bag/phone charms and a small guide book. 



The Museum - square earth under round heaven



Outside around the other side of the Museum in the ‘People’s Square’, we saw that the shape of the Museum itself was inspired by the shape of one of the cauldrons we had seen inside.  Not only this but we learnt here that the Chinese see the Earth as square and Heaven as round, and this is seen in many places, and we were told we would see it later in the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

Onward to lunch!  We ate in the “Sea Palace Floating Restaurant” – yes, it was an actual boat!  The majority of the rest of our meals on this trip at lunch and dinner took the same form as yesterday.  This time, we all used chopsticks (last time, half the people grabbed the forks!), and I had some Green tea which in the UK I find very bitter and I can’t stand it, but here it’s SO much nicer.  Now I find it hard to believe most people I know who drink Green Tea really enjoy the taste of it....I don’t think they would if they drank the fresh stuff here – they wouldn’t go back to it.  I certainly wouldn’t!



Jin Mao Observatory

We proceeded to the Jin Mao Observatory 88 which is on the 88^th floor of the Jin Mao Tower (well, duh!).  The building is just over 370m tall and is known locally as the ‘Pagoda Building’ due to its Pagoda like appearance on the street.  Very imaginative here, obviously....!  The elevator took 45 seconds to reach the 88^th floor, so many ears were popping!

The view of Shanghai from here was brilliant, as it was a sunny day with blue sky.  It was quite hazy due to the smog which we had been told about by Lemon.  It was a layer of greyness lying over the entire city, and it was the first time I have actually physically SEEN smog like that.  The most impressive thing was the number of high rise apartments across the city, which seemed to go on forever.



Shanghai and Pudong



While we were up the Tower, we also saw the tallest hotel lobby in the World (!) at 152m high and 27m in diameter, and we had some (random) “Free Peearls” (!), fortunately drilled for free, unfortunately mounted for a price.  I’m sure I can make something with them when I get home.  I also decided to buy some stamps for our postcards as we were here at the “Highest Aerial Post Office” .... I guess I could say I got the highest “Peearls” up there, but there was no claim about that on the ticket.



The highest hotel lobby in the World!



What was cute, was a little tree on which you could buy a red decoration and hang it there after writing either someone’s name, a wish, a good luck message or putting a photo on it.  Or at least that’s what we all thought – that was before we learnt about the Chinese public dating service.....

Next, we went to Longyang Road Station where – if we wanted to – we could get the train to the airport and back.  No, it wasn’t completely random – this was the MagLev (Magnetic Levitation) train experience we were being offered!  Basically they boast that it takes 8 minutes to travel 30km at a speed of 431km/h.  Mathew and I decided not to go, as we saw it as a bit of a pointless journey.  Shame we couldn’t really see it levitating when it left and arrived though, as there was a shelf on the tracks to stop it falling off (!).  We strolled outside and decided on a short walk through one of the sporadic landscaped gardens under the train tracks and the roads which make up the mixture of scenes of Shanghai.

After everyone had returned, we went back to the hotel, and went for our “Welcome Dinner” at 5:50pm....which was pretty much the same deal as last night!