Shanghai is filled with interesting museums, and they will educate, intrigue and delight children with exhibitions of animation characters, insects and chopsticks, to name a few.

Here are some lesser-known, non-art museums scattered around the city. They’re good destinations on weekends and when foul air means that outdoor activities are canceled.

Animation Museum

Children will love this museum covering the world history of cartoons and animation. The first floor covers history, from China’s shadow puppets to Disney’s characters. The main hall is filled with posters and life-sized statues. Short animation is screened.

In a second-floor studio, children can dub voices for favorite characters.

Tel: 5895-7998

Address: 69 Zhangjiang Rd, Pudong New Area

Opening hours: 10am-5pm, closed on Mondays

Admission: 30 yuan

Brush and Ink Museum

The one-room museum covers the history of ink, inkstones and brushes. It explains how to make ink and features stories about Shanghai and its calligraphers. Brushes and inkstones are displayed, each with an English audio explanation.

Tel: 5169-8918

Address: 2/F, 429 Fujiang Road M., Huangpu Distict

Opening hours: 9:30am-5:30pm, daily

Admission: Free

Chopsticks Museum

This is one of the city’s smallest museums and it’s a bit rundown. It’s the personal exhibition of Lan Xiang, who has collected 2,000 pairs of chopsticks from around Asia. Lan, 81, lives upstairs. If inclined, the former writer can discuss his chopstick journeys. The prized pair is a gilded silver set from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

Tel: 5671-7528

Address: 191 Duolun Rd, Hongkou District

Opening hours: Call in advance

Admission: Free

Glass Museum

The museum, a former glass furnace workshop, explains the making of glass as well as artistic glass pieces. Works from China and overseas are displayed. The museum itself is visually dramatic with its play of light and shadow. It features interactive displays.

Tel: 6618-1970

Address: Bldg 8, 685 Changjiang Rd W., Baoshan District

Opening hours: 9:30am-4:30pm, closed on Mondays

Admission: 20 yuan

Insect Museum

The museum contains more than a million specimens of insects from around the world, many rare and beautiful, some extinct. It contains what many consider the world’s most beautiful insect, the electric blue Morpho Helena from South America. The museum was  founded in 1868 and once called the British Museum in Asia. Today it’s in a modern building.

Tel: 5492-4191

Address: 300 Fenglin Rd, Xuhui District

Opening hours: 9am-4pm

Admission: 15 yuan for adults, 10 yuan for children

Jewish Refugee Museum

The museum is housed in the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue built in 1927. It memorializes the time when Shanghai gave refuge to all people fleeing Nazi Germany. Between 1937 and 1941, Shanghai gave sanctuary to around 25,000 Jewish refugees without visas.

The museum contains many cultural relics, scrolls and photographs of Jewish life in the city at the time. It contains a database with the names of Jewish refugees who lived in Shanghai.

Tel: 6512-6669

Address: 62 Changyang Rd, Hongkou District

Opening hours: 9am-5pm

Admission: 50 yuan

Music Box Museum

The exhibition features the European music boxes and gramophones of a Japanese collector. It showcases what it calls the world’s oldest music box, a small, gold-colored box made by Swiss watchmaker Antol Fabre in 1796. One music box shows a little boy who reaches for a jam jar, but when the box is wound, the angry face of his grandmother appears.

Tel: 6854-7647

Address: 425 Dingxiang Rd, inside Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Pudong New Area

Opening hours: 10am-5pm

Admission: 50 yuan

Postal Museum

This is a wonderful free museum with a beautiful Baroque clock tower, rooftop garden and glassed-in courtyard. The 1924 landmark building was the original Shanghai Postal Museum and explains the history of the postal service in China. It’s filled with interesting exhibits, concession-period post marks, clay seals and postage stamps. It offers an excellent low-level view, west up Suzhou Creek and east towards the Pudong skyline with the Art Deco Broadway Mansions in front.

Tel: 6393-6666 ext. 1280

Address: 250 Suzhou Rd, Hongkou District

Opening hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 9am-5pm

Admission: Free

 

Public Security Museum

Nearly 8,000 items are showcased in the museum about public security from the mid-19th century to date. Wax policemen wear uniforms from China, India and England. Uniforms, badges, weapons and emergency vehicles are displayed. The highlight is a pistol owned by Dr Sun Yat-sen.

Tel: 6472-0256

Address: 2-4/F, 518 Ruijin Rd S., Huangpu District

Opening hours: 11am-4pm, closed on Sundays

Admission: 8 yuan

Typewriter Museum

For those who forget what preceded the computer, this museum exhibits 50 typewriters, the oldest made in 1809. They are on loan from Lu Hanbin, a Chinese businessman living in the Czech Republic.

Tel: 6466-4556

Address: 248 Wuxing Rd, Xuhui District

Opening hours: 10am-10pm

Admission: Free

Travel Info

Ski training in Switzerland

China’s wealthy have flocked to Switzerland for the watches, chocolate and scenery. Now the Alpine country is marketing another national symbol to the Chinese — skiing.

Switzerland is training eight Chinese ski instructors and placing them in St Moritz, Davos, Zermatt, Gstaad and other resorts for the ski season to teach Chinese tourists — in their own language and Chinese savoir faire.

Winter overnight stays by Chinese travelers are expected to double in mountain regions by 2017 and the Swiss Tourism Office hopes instructors will make Swiss pistes more appealing to Chinese tourists.

With its alpine resorts and luxury shopping, Switzerland is already a favored destination for Asian visitors, who stay longer and spend more than Europeans.

Czech golf tourism

Czech Tourism Shanghai has launched a new golf tourism route on the occasion of the first Czech Republic golf championship to be held in July. Tour packages, ranging from eight to 14 days, cover both traditional scenic destinations in Prague, Karlovy Vary and Cesky Krumlov like fairy tale castles, dreamlike villages, churches and historic sites, as well as golf courses such as Pannonia Golf & Country Club and Penati Golf Resort. Tourism spots in Munich, Budapest and Vienna are included.

Tourists can enjoy Munich beer and barbecue as well as performances and stay in five-star hotels. Wings Travel, with offices in Shanghai, organizes the tours. The country has more than 100 golf courses. Golf lovers are encouraged to sign up for the tournament from July 14-16.

 

Suzhou garden tour

Visiting classic gardens with family during the Spring Festival is a tradition in Suzhou. This year the Suzhou gardens organize cultural holiday activities. Visitors can enjoy a flower exhibition in Liu Garden (January 31-February 14), pingtan performances in Wangshi Garden (9:30-11:30am, 1-4pm, February 1-4) and a bonsai exhibition in the Humble Administrator’s Garden.

 

Magic at the zoo

The Shanghai Zoo will stage magic and balloon shows and a zodiac exhibition about the 2014 Year of the Horse. Craftsmen will demonstrate paper-cutting, dough modeling, sugar painting, sachet making and other traditional folk arts featuring horses.Visitors can spot certain horses at the zoo in a treasure hunt and win gifts. They can learn to fold paper horses and to paint them.

 

9/11 museum opens in May

A museum dedicated to victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks will open to the public in mid-May in a giant cavern beneath the World Trade Center site — with a world-class admissions price of US$24.

The opening has been delayed for years due to funding disputes, engineering challenges and a nearly disastrous flood.

But the fee drew protests from critics, including some relatives of 9/11 victims, who said the high price would keep average Americans out.