Museums
Museums in Shanghai
Past and present meet in the former clubhouse of the Shanghai racetrack. The white, open spaces of the museum hold several different exhibits, often incorporating past and present in both Chinese and Western art. It also hosts Shanghai's Biennale.
This centrally located, pottery-shaped building houses the best collection of traditional Chinese art in the country. Permanent exhibits of china, jade, calligraphy, and pottery are always worth a look.
This three-floor paean to puffing is conveniently located opposite the Shanghai Cigarette Factory in the Yangpu District. It holds the dubious accolade of being the world's largest tobacco museum, and pays homage to the habit which has 350 million Chinese people in its grip. It includes beautifully tacky waxwork effigies of famous smokers from history, assorted gadgets and smoking paraphernalia (including Deng Xiaopeng's 'baccy box' and a smoking room.
If you're ever at a loose end in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, make your way to this museum to learn the secrets and history of TCM. There's a giant bronze statue illustrating the 580 acupuncture points on the human body, a specimen hall, and an herb garden.
Milk. It's white, functional, nutritious, but not particularly interesting, right. Wrong! The China Dairy Industry Museum proves that milk can indeed be fascinating. Don't believe us? Go see for yourself. There are all sorts of dairy apparatus, old milking machines, and educational material.
The Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art is an art museum for all those Pudong residents out there. Focusing on new media (i.e. not your typical painting, drawing, and sculpting), this museum is a massive venue that often holds exhibitions of non-Chinese artists.
Another quirky gem on Shanghai's museum roster, this one is part of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in that pretty section of Xuhui with all the music shops. The museum is split into four rooms, containing modern, ancient, minority, and foreign instruments respectively.
This isn't so much unusual as off the beaten track. From the outside, it looks more like a latter-day White House that's landed in leafy Xuhui, but inside you'll find a huge collection of beautiful craft pieces and artworks created in Shanghai over the past hundred years: jade, bamboo carvings, costumes, and figurines, plus an overpriced (but very nice) gift shop.