Day four - China - Culture day!

So on our fourth day in China it was time to check out some of the art galleries and muesuems and become more cultured! I was quite excited about this, I guess when you have lived in New Zealand your whole life "old" is something from the 19th Century. China is of course MUCH older than New Zealand so I was looking forward to seeing what the muesuems had to offer.

We started of our day at the people's square gardens, I'm not sure if this area was a student are OR it was just because it was the weekend but a lot more people wanted to speak english to us in this area. Most people seemed to know where New Zealand was, and that Wellington was the capital and about Lord of the Rings. Which was all in good fun - the gardens at people's square we also pretty nice.





After a week look around the garden's it was time to hit the gallery, I think the main difference between art galleries in New Zealand and in China is that in China the gallery folk are perfectly happy for you to take photo's of the artists works. Which to me seems a little crazy! Even as I was taking the photo's below I was expecting some angry gallery type to come up and demand I delete the photo's I had taken - but no - it's completely acceptable. A bit of a change in mind set for me.













Once we had see all the art we needed to see it was time to head back out into the incredibly HOT Shanghai weather, have some lunch, and head to the muesuem.

On the way to the muesuem we stopped off at a hotel know as "Tommorrow's Square" as we had read in the lonely planet (or perhaps been told by someone in the hostel - I forget which) that the view from up there was pretty cool (and free!) and as you can see there was a pretty amazing view!

And also a view of the tommorrow's square building itself....
Once we had all taken in the view - we headed over to check out the muesuem.

By the time it came to leave the muesuem it was hitting dusk, so we decided to walk to one of the area's in Shanghai know as a bit of a shopping district.

The shopping district was a bit of a shock after our day of (sometimes pretty ancient!) culture at the muesuem...but after four days in China...I was already getting to the stage where the extreme contrasts didn't bother me too much!






So after a day of culture and shopping it was time to head home - but not before we checked out the Hero's Monumount on the Bund River. But here's a couple of things we saw on the way to the monument. Firstly - Brides!! The weird thing was - there was another couple standing next to these two couple - I just couldn't fit everyone in the shot!
I also found Chairman Mao along the Bund that night.....

Finally the Hero's Monument!



Phew! After all that it was time for a well earned sleep!