Today we took a taxi and went to visit the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum here in Shanghai. It is a huge building on several levels with a modern design. At the entrance, we bought two tickets for 90 CNY (11 euros). It was full of school kids everywhere, mainly brought there by their teachers. I like how all kids here wear their school uniforms, and how vibrant and full of life they are. Three curious middle school girls even approached us to ask where we were from and to take a picture with us, one using her smartphone and the other using her iPad Mini, or perhaps another tablet brand. Kids these days have everything at their fingertips, especially those in the big cities of China. Dipty said that, in Asian culture in general, parents do everything for their kids, with their entire lives being dedicated to them, their education, and their well-being until the day they leave the planet.
The museum had several rooms: one full of information about quantum computers.
Another room was full of airplanes and their history, airplane flying simulations, and parachuting simulations with kids wearing suits and VR glasses, simulating a jump from an airplane. Another room showcased the history of computers and artificial intelligence. One room was full of trees, fog, and Amazon rainforest rain and thunder simulations that gave you the feeling of being in a real jungle. Other rooms had laser games, examples of plants, a general knowledge section showing how different things are made, with samples that kids could touch, as well as drones, AI robots applied in medicine, and so much more. They even had a 4D theater, but we didn’t go there because tickets needed to be bought in advance.
I felt that this museum is more perfect for school kids than for adults because it shows not only history but also the state of the art in science and technology, and lets kids play games, and try things out. For sure, many kids get inspired from such a young age to go in a certain direction later in life.
After that, just a few meters away from the museum, we visited the A.P. Plaza market, a market known in Shanghai for being “the place” where people can buy almost everything, but especially copies of original brands such as Prada, Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga, Hermes, and many more. We saw a lot of foreign people from around the world, such as Europeans, Americans, Indians, Arabs, etc., buying “fake bags close to the original,” which we later learned from Lin, one of the owners of a bag shop there called Mary & Lin Shop/Mary’s Shop, situated at stand A2-18. She explained that there are three levels of quality regarding “copies close to original bags”: low-level quality (the bag looks 90% like the original, but the leather, for example, feels fake, and the logo is different or not present at all), medium-level quality (95% close to the original, where the leather still feels a bit cheaper than the original and the material and stitching quality are not that great), and high-level quality (99% close to the original, with everything looking original, very good stitching, good hardware quality such as buttons and zippers, holding its shape, feeling good in hand, and looking great).
The market experience was really nice and calm, with people asking you to buy something from their shop only two or three times, but not running after you or pressuring you, like we experienced in India. On top of that, it was a clean, non-smoking market with good-quality products, so overall it was a nice experience and we felt really good.
After that, we took a taxi and returned to our hotel, followed later by another very delicious meal at Weixiangzhai, where we ate, to the best of our knowledge, the best sesame paste noodles in Shanghai. We ended the day with a competition to see who could eat more lychees. By evening, we had finished them all, despite buying 1.5 kg of them that morning. The lychees are in season and so delicious here in China!
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