Museums and Music

Wednesday morning, I woke up at 10 (after all but passing out from the few sips of "Shanghai Celebration" the night before) feeling quite the culture vulture. I had had enough of the club scene, no matter how pretentious, and desperately needed a bit of high-brow eye candy. After a quick brunch, I dropped 2 yuan to hop on bus #123 headed for People's Square.

People's Square is a vast garden surrounded by several museums, kind of like the Smithsonian district in DC. The Shanghai Museum is a usual must see but as I had already been there, I skipped it this time for novel attractions.

First stop of the day was the Urban Planning Museum, which briefly made me wish I were course 4 or 11 just so that I could have better appreciated it . Pictures:

The giant, Metropolis-esque statue in the lobby

A miniature model of some buildings from old
with miniature models of people in colorful attire.
If you look closely, the people's heads are kind of too big for their bodies...

A portion of a miniature model of the entirety of Shanghai and surrounding areas, which covers almost an entire floor. I was sorely tempted to jump in and play but refrained for fear of impaling myself on the miniature Pearl of the Orient.

Lets play a game! Find the odd one out (and don't say London because it's pink)!

I had Pocky from a vending machine for a snack. Later, I got bubble tea from a snack stand. Oh my god, I'm so Asian...

Binary tiles on the floor that glowed different patterns of 0's and 1's.
My inner bit-diddler jumped with joy.

This picture would be cool if it weren't so blurry. I liked the effect of reflection and reflection within reflection. I also like my silhouette, who is much more photogenic than I.

After the Urban Planning museum, I walked over to Nanjing xi lu to visit one of the two art museums. For some reason, I completely missed the Museum of Contemporary Art and found myself in front of the Shanghai Art Museum, convenient since I couldn't decide which one I wanted to see more.

Downstairs was an exhibit of revolutionary oil paintings. It's interesting to see images of the red army and communist leaders rendered in traditional western style. The guy who did these has my last name. Maybe we're related.



Upstairs was a lovely exhibit of kitschy Chinese pop art. Some highlights:

A cage full of pillows in the shape of speech bubbles with (what I assumed to be) Chinese internet slang printed on them.

Another picture. It was fun.

Paintings of pretty boy Chinese hipsters.

A piece entitled "Sexy Letter"

The exhibit really liked pandas. Here is a small crowd of dubious-looking ones.

They had this cute exhibit room called "Re-Panda", where they had a box full of differently decorated panda parts and you got to put them together by pinning them on the walls.

F*ing amazing

There was a series of paintings of nymphets with Hello Kitties and Tare Pandas (pa pa xiong mao). It was cute until I noticed that all of them have small lacerations all over.

There was a room playing a creepy film with creepy children and creepily pretty music with paper and a pack of markers where people can draw their own pictures. I stayed there for almost an hour writing the note above. There was a couple in the room who wanted to figure out the song and watched the film at least 5 times to catch the 2 second caption at the end. The girl likes Death Note. We bonded over that.

The note, complete with a melting panda with an injured ear in a puddle of tears...

To my pleasant surprise, somebody actually responded to my note (!)
Here's the text of the email:

Hello spaceman (Please allow me to call you like that. Thats the name occured to me as the moment i read your message left in that space),

I dont know whether you can really receive this mail or i got the wrong mail address.caus i dont have much confidence in my memory. Im glad to be the one among those who have read the message you left there. When i read it, it gave me a feeling that you were really there at that moment. Maybe its funny, but i believe the cross of two different spaces. Anyway i like this test, and want you to know that this test is successful. When you receive this mail, that means that this test has influence among the visitors to some extend. Its fantastic. Thank you.

Besos

Teresa

Nice to know that I have apparently become "Spaceman", a heartthrob of emo Chinese girls. Still, I appreciate that somebody actually wrote back. If only I were and attractive boy. It would have made a lovely story.

I had planned on stopping by JZ club Wednesday evening but after checking their web site, I decided that I cannot miss the performance of JQ Whitcomb's band the following night. I had stumbled across JQ's blog on the Shanghai jazz scene while googling gigs around town and was very curious to hear him play.

After a whole day of unsuccessfully attempting to contact BB to get him to go with me, I ended up going with my aunt instead. JZ was every bit as stylish as a jazz club should be without going over the top. I felt a distinct Oriental flair reminiscent of 1930's Shanghai. The house was pretty packed and the music was brilliant. It was a shame I had to leave after only the first set because my aunt was tired. I would have liked to stay for the whole thing.

Our table with its beaded lamp (real candle inside! Not those crappy LED things!) and my White Russian. The actual atmosphere was not as red as this picture suggests.

The band (trumpet, sax, trombone, guitar, bass, drums). Apologies for the blurry picture.

With this, my Shanghai adventures draw to a close (for now, I will be back for a bit in August). In a couple of hours, I will board a plane to Dalian where I will start working for the summer. Dalian brings beaches and dog meat (local delicacy apparently). It's also the purported fashion capital of China. I'll just be glad for the end of this superparental supervision.