We decided to devote much of our second day in Shanghai to visiting its renowned museum. This turned out to be a good decision. This place is full of Chinese art – pottery, paining, sculpture – and a vast collection historical artefacts. In some ways it is similar in concept to the British Museum, except that it only really deals with Chinese culture. The similarities with the British Museum do not stop there. The domed glass roof looks very similar in construction to the new British Museum atrium roof. As is often the case with museum visits, one gets overload after a couple of hours, and even with a lunch break, we were seriously flagging by 4 pm. In retrospect we should have split the visit over our two remaining days in Shanghai. The rest of Renmin Park, in which the museum is located, was peasant enough and provided a relaxing break from pounding the museum galleries.
In the evening we fulfilled one of my objectives when spending time in any new city – a visit to a local blues club. I discovered the Cotton Club (actually, our local Chinese guides helped to some extent), which had a great house band, good beer, and friendly staff. A splendid night out!
Yesterday, our final day in Shanghai, we were not really sure how best to spend the time, having already done the main attractions. In the end we opted for a wander round the old city, the area occupied by the original Chinese inhabitants of Shanghai before it became overrun by foreign trading concessions. In the afternoon, we wrapped things up with a visit to a couple of other parks in the city.
Shanghai is justifiably on the must-see list for any China tour. However, with the benefit of hindsight, and if our schedule had been more flexible, I thing two days would have been enough to get the flavour of the city.
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