The Shanghai Museum

This is the Shanghai Museum. There’s a famous gallery of bronze pots inside, and the building is shaped to look like one of those pots.

 

I wasn’t very interested in the museum, so I took my new Gundam.

 

  

In the gallery, there were axes, bronze statues, and bronze bells. A lot of them were made before 1000 B.C.

 There were also more art galleries that had beautiful things in them. The ceramics gallery was very impressive. Chinese ceramics have been famous for centuries. Some were huge! Some were miniscule.

      

My mom’s favorite gallery was the calligraphy gallery. In China, writing is like art. The earliest writing is found on “oracle bones” from the Shang dynasty in 1200 B.C. Priests heated sheep bones until they cracked. People thought the cracks could predict the future. Priests wrote their predictions on the bones.

              

Other ancient characters are found carved on stones. We went to one museum in Xi’an that had nothing but carved stones.

    

Characters are also carved on the bottom of seals. Chinese people have been using these seals to mark documents and other things for thousands of years. They usually use red ink. The museum had a whole collection of beautiful seals.

Here are three different styles of calligraphy. The first one is an old style, called “seal script” because it was used on seals. The second one is called “official script.” It’s the writing used by government officials. See how even and regular it is? The last one is “running script.” It’s more expressive and artistic.

Most Chinese paintings have calligraphy on them. They also have seals. Often the calligraphy will be a poem that says something related to the picture. Chinese painters are fond of nature and landscapes, especially mountains. What do you think the poem on this painting might be about?

Many of the paintings are in the same black ink used for calligraphy. Like calligraphy, sometimes the paintings are realistic, and sometimes they are expressive.

Mom has been making a picture collection of different kinds of calligraphy she sees around. Sometimes I help her find them, like the one on the bamboo. She doesn’t know what they say, but she thinks they look cool.

After we looked at all the galleries, we went to the gift shop and bought a book about the Monkey King. We went past my favorite restaurant (it was closed – wahhh) to an art pottery shop. I liked the minature teacups. But mostly I read my Monkey King book. I’m only interested in art that you can use for things, like cups or vases.