Exploring Shanghai

I’ve been really busy today, got up early and had an ambitious plan! I’ve been through 2 museums and walked from the hostel through the French Concession, and stayed the afternoon getting myself lost in the Taikang road area 🙂

My first visit was to the Urban Planning exhibition, where the officials of Singapore brag about their great city’s development. They had a great virtual tour of the city, and lots of fun little dioramas. I was a bit dissapointed not to see much future plans, it seems everything basically stops in 2010 when the Expo happens.

I also went to the Shanghai Contemporary Arts Museum, and it’s a funny coincidence how that abbreviates nicely to SCAM! 🙂 But while it was tiny and not a lot of interesting things there, I did find two pieces I liked, a pink scary angel and a room full of down. Yeah, I know my contemporary arts taste is kinda weird..

This room full of down left me speechless. It had a crazy weird atmosphere, with a bunch of fans blowing the down around, and the neon lights giving it a strange hue. 

For some reason this pink angel scared the hell out of me. I could not stop looking at it. If it would have moved, I’d be on the plane back home by now..

I spent the afternoon navigating my way southwest from the hostel towards the French Concession. This is the district governed by the French back in the day, and they built it in a beautiful european style. There’s also a couple of very interesting areas there, I walked through Xintiandi, a recently modernized old district. It’s beautiful, but that was not my destination.

Beautiful pedestrian streets of Xitiandi

Eventually I arrived at the Taikang road area, and spent a couple of hours in the narrow alleys. The area is filled with craftsmen, designers and artists, selling their work. And mixed in with that is lots and lots of bars and small cafes. I really liked the area, and can imagine it will explode at night with tons of partying people in the all-pedestrian streets. Hope I’ll be able to go out here sometime 🙂

Random street in the French Conecssion

Loved the shapes of this building. The top of it lights up at night too, then it looks like Sauron has a second home in Shanghai! 😛

Narrow alleys of Taikang road, a real maze of little shops and bars, and a very fun place to hang out

A quitet area of the People’s park, I liked sitting by the water to realax after the museum trips

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