Shanghai Museum

With Jean and Thibault having been out to a nightclub on Saturday night, I left them for a long lie-in and instead got up early to visit Shanghai Museum. This is in People's Square, but People's Square is enormous (and not very square if one wants to be geometrical about it), so first I took a few shots of the awesome surrounding skyscrapers and then explored the Square and its gardens and fountains before the museum itself opened at 9am.

Note the Tai-Chi practitioners in the background

This fountain is rather fun. It has all sorts of varied spurts to the accompaniment of music which emanates from the "urns" surrounding it.

One of the musical "urns"

The above photos were taken from in front of the museum - the museum is below. As you can see a circular building and frankly not too attractive from the exterior.

But inside I was surprised at how excellent it was, especially for an English-speaking visitor. As very few people in Beijing speak English, I was amazed at the English language captions on the exhibits. They were so well-written and informative. I am used to poor English translations of things, or very limited captions, but these were better than in most UK museums. And also the presentation of the exhibits was so nice and simple, not over-crowded. It made it a true pleasure to wander around. The only two minuses were (a) the air-conditioning which is really on the vicious side (I think I might have had hypothermia if I had stayed much longer) and (b) the Chinese don't seem to whisper in galleries in the way we would, but rather chatter loudly, and that goes for their young kids too.

 I started with the ceramics collection, China being very much ahead of the game technologically speaking for centuries. You can see what I mean below in terms of uncrowded presentation.

 Leaving that collection I went around the large airy atrium to the Chinese painting collection. This is more extensive than the photos below suggest, but with the low lighting it wasn't easy to photograph much. But I do like Chinese landscapes.

 There is a section devoted to Chinese seals. But far too small to show in detail!

There is an ethnographic section reflecting the art of various constituent populations that make up China (there are lots)

I really like Chinese jade, and there is a truly wonderful collection here, starting with pieces thousands of years old. Discs were a popular form originally, I guess being relatively simple to drill and polish.

 Eventually the simple gave way to the incredibly intricate

 The Chinese furniture section was a delight too, both for the simplicity of some of it, and for other pieces, the extraordinary detail.

A hatstand/hallstand, not an uncomfortable chair

 The ancient sculpture gallery was perhaps a little disappointing, I think because I am so used to western classical perfection in terms of human representation, in comparison to which this seems a bit crude.

A thousand buddhas (well some of the thousand)

There is also a bronzes collection, but this tends to be countless very similar shaped objects with only a small number of unusual pieces like this one.

 And there was a specific archaeological exhibition from various digs around Shanghai. I have included just the one shot from this. A bowl, but can you guess what its made of? As a clue, its upside down from its original source material.

Got it yet? Its a human skull. Well, waste not want not. Not sure it would catch on in John Lewis.

Back outside it had brightened up since the morning. Might even have been blue skies, were it not for the smog which keeps even blue grey.

 And back to the hotel to pick up Thibault and Jean to take them out for some lunch. Such a nice smart art deco hotel it almost felt a waste to leave it!