Shanghai’s Museums

Shanghai has its share of wondrous museums and while philatelists should make a beeline to the Shanghai Postal Museum (250 North Suzhou Road), which is housed on the second floor of Shanghai’s Central Post Office, it’s quite easy to hop on a train and head out to the nearby cities of Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing (a new fast train scheduled to begin running mid 2010 will cut the journey time between Nanjing and Shanghai in half – to just over and hour). Textile enthusiasts will enjoy the China National Silk Museum (73-1 Yuhuangshan Road; www.chinasilkmuseum.com) in Hangzhou. Silk has been produced in China from approximately 2700 BC and has played a significant part in the economic and social development of the country for centuries. Eight galleries with excellent English signage explore the origins, production and trade of silk and feature displays of different types of woven, dyed and printed silk fabrics. The costume gallery and cases of rare silks discovered in tomb sites along the Silk Road are among its highlights. One gallery is filled with looms of different periods and types with craftsmen at work on them. And if you ever wanted to know about the lifecycle of the silk moth, the gallery devoted to sericulture will answer all your questions.

If Chinese classical gardens take your fancy, Suzhou is the place to see them, but you may also want to visit I M Pei’s contribution to his home city, the Suzhou Museum (204 Dongbei Street; www.szmuseum.com/szbwgen/index.html ). It abuts the Humble Administrator’s Garden in the heart of old Suzhou. The building combines Pei’s distinctive modern style with classical Suzhou style – with steel and glass used to create a random structure full of movement found in traditional Suzhou building. Objects dating from the Neolithic to the Qing are housed in galleries which encircle a central garden. Of note are treasures from the Tang and Song dynasties and paintings and calligraphy from the Ming and the Qing.

And for opera buffs, the Kunqu Opera Museum (14 Zhongzhangjia Lane, Pingjiang District; www.kunopera.net/ ) is well worth a stop. Recently restored, this opera venue was built by a Shanxi businessman during the Qing dynasty and opened as a museum in 2003. Music fills the air in the courtyard giving visitors a flavour of this art-form. For the full effect of Kunqu opera’s artistic and dramatic power, performances are often scheduled in the main building with its classical stage covered by a saddle-shaped roof and decorative well-shaped ceiling. Collections of costumes, scripts, masks, instruments, photographs and historical documents are displayed in exhibition areas offering a concise introduction to Kunqu. Performances can be booked in advance for small groups and now that it has been listed by UNESCO as one of the Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage, government funding has been made available to support public performances in China as well as abroad.

By Cathy Giangrande & Miriam Clifford

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