Top 7 Museums to Visit in Shanghai

As the biggest and richest city of China, Shanghai is not only home to star restaurants, shiny malls and world-class wine cellars, but also a great melting pot where east meets west and old meets new. For culture vultures, Shanghai houses more than 80 museums to enrich your trip with different charms and themes. It can be overwhelming for travelers to hit all of them, while just a few of them could allow you to get real cultural insights into Shanghai city and even the whole country. Here we pick seven of Shanghai's best and funniest museums ranging from large state-run establishment to a hidden-in-the-basement private art center.

Perched in the city center near the People's Square, Shanghai Museum houses one of the most impressive collections of historical artifacts across the country. The 4-stored museum boasts more than 10 exhibition halls displaying everything from ancient China, such as ceramics, porcelain, sculptures, bronzes, paintings, jade, traditional Chinese calligraphy, garments and antique furniture. Those treasures could be dated back as far as the Neolithic period, which would walk you through the great civilization of China spanning for over 5,000 years.

The rich collections of the traditional ethnic minority costumes are a big draw that may provide you with a refreshing look into the diverse culture and customs of China. The entry of the museum is free of charge, and there are 8,000 tickets issued daily. Thus go early in case of long queues.

Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center is a small private museum little heard by Chinese but well known by western travelers. The museum highlights a rich collection of posters from the Maoist period of communist China, particularly from the Cultural Revolution period. The propaganda depicts highly-spirited peasants, heroic soldiers, cherubic children, radical revolutionary Red Guards and typical portraits of Chairman Mao. More than 5,000 original posters vividly chart the significant period of China's history between 1949 and 1979, and many of them are rare last-piece ones.

Founded by Yang Peiming who has been collecting the posters as his biggest hobby, the museum is hard to find since it is hidden in a personal basement of an apartment in the former French Concession area. Two rooms of the basement are turned into the exhibition halls, and there is a specialty gift shop where visitors could buy some copies of the poster and other folk artworks.

If it is the first time for you to visit Shanghai, you shall not miss the Urban Planning Exhibition Center which demonstrates the city's rapid growth and development over the past two decades and how Shanghai is expected to expand in the near future. Entering the museum, your eyesight would be caught by an iconic gilded monument of Shanghai's skyscrapers in the lobby that is regarded as the tribute to the magical city's incredible modernization. The museum displays a great number of old maps, photographs and multimedia videos to display Shanghai's urban renewal process. The biggest highlight of the museum is the gigantic scale model of the city that occupies nearly the entire floor. From different vantage points, you can not only have a clear sight of the symbolic Pudong skyline but also some casual neighborhoods where the local visitors may live in.

Located on the site of a former synagogue, Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum is a special place commemorating the Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from the Holocaust during World War II. Between 1937 and 1941, Shanghai received over 25,000 Jewish refugees and provided sanctuary for them. The museum exhibits a lot of old passports, photographs, films, and personal items displaying the real lives of the former Jewish residents, and even has a Name Wall with a list of the celebrated ones. Besides, the building of the museum is a sight to behold, with red bricks, pillars of the baroque, stone-arched doorways and stylish original tiles.

Also known as Wulixiang Museum, Shanghai Shikumen Open House Museum is located in the North Block of Xintiandi which features typical shikumen-style "stone-gate" residences dating back in the 1920s and 30s. In Shanghai, there used to be nearly 9,000 shikumen houses in the city where over 70% of Shanghai residents were born and raised, but now they are disappearing quickly.

Founded on a restored three-story Shikumen house, the museum was made up of a courtyard, entrance hall, bedroom, patio, study and lounge which were nostalgically set and furnished, with original exhibits of dressing table, club chairs, worn leather suitcases, painted fans, enameled compacts of ladies' face powder, retro film magazines and old wedding photos. Wandering across the rooms, you will gain a vision of the typical lifestyle of a middle class family in the 1930 even easier.

Opened in recent years, it is one of Shanghai's newest and funniest museums on this list. The museum is established in a former glass-making factory located in a run-down neighborhood out of the city center, but glass fans would find it worth the taxi ride. It displays a dazzling variety of exhibitions of both ancient and contemporary glassworks, while the building is an impressive artwork in itself. Crammed with glittering windows, flashy LED screens and translucent floors, the inner part of the museum is like a surreal space where aliens would live in, while it makes visitors a quiet respite from Shanghai's noise and crowds. In the industrial area behind the museum, there are regular glass-blowing classes that both adults and kids could join in. It comes with an additional fee, but it would be an unforgettable experience.

Opened in 2001, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum houses a dozen of permanent exhibits dedicated to achievements in different fields like technology, nature, and science. It is one of the best museums in Shanghai suitable for family visitors with kids as it offers a lot of entertainment to while away a morning or an afternoon. The museum is designed to make the visit more of fun by featuring interactive robots, IMAX films, outer space and even faux rain forest and jungle gyms. In the World of Robots, visitors are provided chances to compete against machines at chess and archery, while in the World of Animals, you can get close to the taxidermy and lifelike animal models pouncing on prey. There are also slides, jungle gyms and crawling tunnels for preschoolers to have fun.