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August 14, 2015

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Museums offer insight into days gone by

Source: Shanghai Daily | August 14, 2015, Friday | Print Edition

Shanghai Postal Museum

Shanghai is famous for many things, but it might be less known that this city has been the hub of modern postal development in China. The Shanghai Postal Museum allows visitors to broaden their knowledge about the city by offering guidance in the country’s postal history.

Located in the Shanghai Post Building on Sichuan Road N., the museum exhibits a wide variety of artifacts that are related to postal development: a mail dispatch machine, postal uniforms, old mailboxes, postal bicycles and motorcycles.

Of course, there are also stamps, stamps and more stamps. The museum features stamps dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), but its collection includes those from countries such as Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, France, Austria and more. If that’s not enough, vistiors enter a separate dark room maintained exclusively for treasured stamps.

The museum also gives a rundown on the life of Zhu Xuefan, the country’s first postal department minister.

After finishing a stroll on the second floor, take a look at further relics on the first floor, on the courtyard show field. The courtyard of the Shanghai Post encompasses an area larger than 1,000 square meters. The renovated courtyard showcases reproduced artifacts such as a Qing Dynasty post carriage, the first mail car, and a train post office in which the visitor can see an official postal document.

All in all, this museum offers an experience that can be enjoyed by visitors of all ages.

 

Shanghai Museum of Old Camera Manufacturing

The museum is another example of the hidden pearls that lie within the concrete jungle of Shanghai. With today’s modern technology, it takes only a few seconds to take a picture with a smartphone and we can share it with everybody through social media. It was a long road for technology to reach this level, and a visit to this museum allows us to better understand this lengthy procedure.

It was opened in June 2012. A visit to this museum means a brief travel through time in order to deepen knowledge about the camera industry in China, which dates back to 1957. The museum not only features a collection of vintage cameras, but also a workshop and a collection of sculptures which are posing for a picture. There are tools of the camera industry on display as well. These artifacts include the upper and lower lens synchronizer, focus length measuring instrument, camera vibration-proof tester and the 3D camera velocimeter. The comprehensive insight into the camera industry offered by this museum makes it a suitable place for those who seek intellectual leisure on a lazy afternoon. Given the small size of it, a visit to the museum entails only advantages: gaining valuable knowledge in a relatively short amount of time.

Shanghai Museum of Public Security

The museum offers a rare insight into Shanghai’s police history. It encompasses nine sections which introduce several aspects of the police, including police heroes and martyrs, traffic control, prisons, weapons and so forth. The first floor showcases police cars, sidecars and other police vehicles. One of the first halls displays over 1,000 artifacts telling us the tale of the development of the police.

The next hall showcases 230 relics that show the evolution of the maintenance of public order in Shanghai. The theme of another section is firefighting. This hall exhibits relics related to this noble profession from various historical periods, including the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties. The exhibited artifacts include sculptures of firefighters, firefighting equipment and scale models of firefighting vehicles.

Further scale models of the museum include the buildings of the Shanghai Police Station and the Entry-Exit Administration of Shanghai Public Security Bureau. A further hall of the museum features approximately 70 exhibits of police badges and emblems, gifts and souvenirs from different countries and regions.

One of the peculiarities of the museum is a part which is maintained for a former service dog, Victory, that passed away in 1957. Further exhibited artifacts include different types of handcuffs, weapons and police motorcycles.

A visit to this place helps us to understand the history of Shanghai and China from a new aspect — therefore it is an appropriate place to visit for those who intend to know the city better.

 

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