Anybody looking for something a little more high-brow when the weather demands an indoor destination is well-advised to head to one of the city’s many museums. The Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, which is housed in a dramatic contemporary building, is in many ways the best of the bunch. Inside, the museum is packed with exhibitions that kids of all ages can enjoy, from space-craft and performing robots to extensive wildlife dioramas, monster bugs and walk-through caverns. It contains a special child-centered activity zone where even toddlers will feel at home. You can find a full listings database for all museams and family related venues on the that’s Shanghai website.
The museum also contains an Imax – and even a 4D – theater, which regularly shows films on such themes as dinosaurs, insects, space and undersea adventure (admission RMB 60).
Teenagers and tourists may enjoy a visit to the underground mall across from the museum at the Science and Technology Museum subway stop. Anybody with a taste for the gray-side of the market will find the vast plaza a great place to try out their bargaining skills and pick up pseudodesigner items as well as t-shirts, trinkets and other souvenirs.
Also located in Pudong, on the bottom floor of the Pearl Orient TV Tower, is the Shanghai History Museum, which offers an especially entertaining way of digesting Shanghai’s history. Photographs and memorabilia are presented alongside numerous life-sized models. Kids will especially enjoy the vivid dioramas of street scenes that bring Shanghai’s colorful story to life (admission RMB 35).
Dinosaur hunters of all ages have one clear option: the Shanghai Natural History Museum (260 Yan’an E. Rd), whose main hall contains the fossilized skeleton of a giant sauropod, several other reconstructed dinosaurs and gargantuan prehistoric remnants from more recent times, including a mammoth. On the upper floors is a large collection of pickled and stuffed creatures.
This is probably of most interest to those with a taste for the morbid and abnormal, including the capacity to appreciate such treasures as bottled foetuses, giant intestinal worms and photographs of mutants. The signage, much in English, provides an education in the Marxist analysis of natural history, especially palaeo-anthropology, greatly indebted to Engels’ Dialectics of Nature.
The museum is due for an overhaul, but its large and at times eccentric collection has a distinctive charm (augmented by the extremely low entrance fee, with admission costing just RMB 5). Despite its bureaucratic sounding name the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall (100 People’s Avenue) is surprisingly kid friendly. This is primarily due to the vast 3rd floor model of Shanghai’s near future, which cannot fail to fascinate. The virtual reality style tour of the city is also captivating for young and old alike.
Another surprisingly family-friendly place is the Shanghai Sculpture Space (570 Huaihai W. Rd), which is a fantastic example of the ever intensifying trend to reanimate Shanghai’s industrial heritage. With its large grassy field, huge sculptures, innovative spaces and new galleries and restaurants opening all the time this is a fun space to explore.
In addition to those mentioned, Shanghai has dozens of other museums dedicated to specific themes. Other family friendly examples include the Railway Museum, Public Security Museum and Postal Museum, each with its own particular eccentricities and charms. The highlight of the Postal Museum, for example, is a rooftop patio that is accessed through an elevator in the building’s atrium. The roof garden is almost always empty and offers spectacular views over Suzhou Creek.
For museums dedicated specifically to kids, it is worth trying the Children’s Museum (61 Songyuan Rd). Although parents my find the main floor a bit worse for wear, any reservations their kids might share are overwhelmed by eagerness to explore the submarine and rocket ship. The second floor’s ‘discovery centre’ is a miniature city, with a hospital, fire station, beauty parlor, theater and other attractions (admission RMB 20).
For a more sober and educational introduction to science, check out the Xuhui District’s Science and Technology Museum for Youth, which is only open to children over five years of age (137 Jianguo W. Rd).
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