First, we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel from the west side of the river (Puxi) to the east side (Pudong). This is no ordinary tunnel, mind you. You ride in enclosed modules (rather space-agey) on tracks through a tunnel covered in LEDs, lasers, and inflatable clowns. It's a good thing that neither one of us suffer from seizures because this was a mind trip. At the same time, it was a classic Chinese attraction because it was a lame attempt to be high-tech, well worth the 5 dollar ticket though.
Once we were on the other side, we went to visit the iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower, a simultaneously perverse and communist building that is the symbol for Shanghai, like the Space Needle for Seattle.
You can buy tickets to the top, but since the air was not clear, we stuck to the Shanghai History Museum on the bottom floor. Rather than using artifacts or pictures, the museum relied on dioramas to recreate thousands of years of history. Some of them were very accurate; the hair on some of the Chinese mannequins was authentically balding--you could see individual hair follicles. Some of the exhibits though left us bewildered. Take the image below for example:
This is supposed to be a famous dance hall for the westerners in the French Concession during the occupation of Shanghai at the beginning of the twentieth century. The figures are about the size of Barbies and look like zombies. I'm not kidding! I call this the "Zombie Ball." It was really creepy because opposite this was a life-size reproduction of a hovel with poor Chinese covered in dirt. I'm not sure if this juxtaposition was intentional by the museum staff, but you can just imagine the message they're conveying: Look at the tiny, money-grubbing foreigners sucking the life out of the honorable, proud Chinese. Overall, the dioramas with Chinese figures were much more lifelike than any that contained a baigui (white devil). We left the museum in a state of befuddlement.
Then on to another museum, the Urban Planning Museum in People's Square, that was chock full of more dioramas about the future development of Shanghai and, more importantly, for the World Expo in 2010. (Shanghai has count-down clocks around the city that let you know there are 440 days left until the Expo.) By this time, we were tired, cranky, and overwhelmed by all the minute details. Turner took a lot of pictures though.
![](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PGCVnUt2YFM/SZ4FUvjI60I/AAAAAAAAAcE/bq4R5zoUAMc/s400/Shanghai+14th-1.jpg)
Salute!
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