Bao You, King Cheng Period, Early 11th Century BC
What was interesting in the Gallery of Calligraphy was a bronze bowl from early 11th century BC with early Chinese pictograms engraved on the inside surface. These pictograms developed over the following 30 centuries into the Mandarin known today.
I’ve noticed a reverence in Chinese museums for calligraphy which I don’t think I’ll ever fathom. Looking around the calligraphy gallery of The Shanghai Museum I could see that the style of 
characters changed over the centuries, and that was the point of the whole gallery. The blurb on the gallery’s leaflet says “The words displayed……have exposed the evolution of Chinese characters, which shows people’s long exploration in the beauty of the art of writing.”
characters changed over the centuries, and that was the point of the whole gallery. The blurb on the gallery’s leaflet says “The words displayed……have exposed the evolution of Chinese characters, which shows people’s long exploration in the beauty of the art of writing.”
But if you looked at samples of Medieval script, copperplate and Marion Richardson style writing there are enormous differences but 
we are not obsessed with them. We certainly don’t have all major museums showing reams of scrolls illustrating the point. Until recently it was a brush, not a pen, that the Chinese wrote with; and I know that the quality of the brushstrokes are revered. Some of the accompanying text to the exhibits states that the calligraphy developed from 960AD to 1644 “with a focus on the expression of personal feeling and incorporation of poetic and artistic genius. The development of 
these skills and moods in calligraphy inspired new calligraphic schools and styles”. I don’t get it. Much of me thinks that the emperor has no clothes. Or has it been lost in translation and it is the content that developed in style rather than the writing itself? I’m baffled. The Chinese written language requires rote learning of what were originally pictograms, but then became ever more complicated. The strokes have to be done in a particular order from top left to bottom right and the complicated symbols memorized. Few people really mastered the written language and the symbol gives you no clue as to how the word is pronounced. You cannot sound out the strokes to make the sounds of the word. The diagram just denotes a concept. And the same diagram can be pronounced in different ways giving totally different spoken sounds depending on where you are in the country, in the form of regional dialects or more accurately, languages. Many words have the same pinyin translation but totally different tones, or change of pitch of the vowel sounds, which completely change the meaning of the word. It’s difficult to learn written Mandarin. You can’t learn this without endless practice. I think that this need to learn the written language by rote then led to this way of how you learn being spread throughout educational establishments and exists to this day across all subjects. Add to that the need for the Chinese to conform with the clan or group view and you end up with few people that can think outside the box, a characteristic which is valued to a greater extent in the West (but not appreciated when taken to its extremes.)
we are not obsessed with them. We certainly don’t have all major museums showing reams of scrolls illustrating the point. Until recently it was a brush, not a pen, that the Chinese wrote with; and I know that the quality of the brushstrokes are revered. Some of the accompanying text to the exhibits states that the calligraphy developed from 960AD to 1644 “with a focus on the expression of personal feeling and incorporation of poetic and artistic genius. The development of 
these skills and moods in calligraphy inspired new calligraphic schools and styles”. I don’t get it. Much of me thinks that the emperor has no clothes. Or has it been lost in translation and it is the content that developed in style rather than the writing itself? I’m baffled. The Chinese written language requires rote learning of what were originally pictograms, but then became ever more complicated. The strokes have to be done in a particular order from top left to bottom right and the complicated symbols memorized. Few people really mastered the written language and the symbol gives you no clue as to how the word is pronounced. You cannot sound out the strokes to make the sounds of the word. The diagram just denotes a concept. And the same diagram can be pronounced in different ways giving totally different spoken sounds depending on where you are in the country, in the form of regional dialects or more accurately, languages. Many words have the same pinyin translation but totally different tones, or change of pitch of the vowel sounds, which completely change the meaning of the word. It’s difficult to learn written Mandarin. You can’t learn this without endless practice. I think that this need to learn the written language by rote then led to this way of how you learn being spread throughout educational establishments and exists to this day across all subjects. Add to that the need for the Chinese to conform with the clan or group view and you end up with few people that can think outside the box, a characteristic which is valued to a greater extent in the West (but not appreciated when taken to its extremes.)
In a similar vein is the gallery devoted to seals, known colloquially by old China hands as Chops, adapted from the Hindi word for a stamp, a chapa. The seals were used as an official signature, but could also be used to convey much more than just a name. In the gallery many of the seals stand over mirrors so that you can see text on the seal as well as the often highly carved stone at the other end from the seal. 
There are only so many of these that I can look at too. If I could read Mandarin they might be a little more interesting, so that I could enjoy the development of the style. But I’m not sure. It would be a little like looking at someone’s stamp collection. And we know how tedious the future George VI found his father’s obsession with stamps. When we were still in the UK and going through the first stage of the visa process, the Chinese authorities asked Richard for his company’s seal i.e. the mark made by a chop. They didn’t have one, as you don’t need one in the UK, so they had to get one specially made.
Another gallery of more of the same was the Painting Gallery. For centuries the Chinese seem to have painted the same tree or the same mountain, or the same tree with the same mountain. Not only that, but they seem to have painted the tree or the mountain in exactly the same way. It took them centuries before they started to add colour to the image of the tree and mountain thing. I suppose the same could be said of Western art prior to the Renaissance. I find all that boring too, but at least it was in colour. I must admit here that I have a very low boredom threshold when it comes to art and so some extent museums. I was dragged around them far too young as a child because I went with my elder brothers to museums. Not only that but as my mother was an art teacher she would spend 15 minutes in front of a picture in an art gallery which would take me 3 seconds to see all that there was to see. I still can’t go into an art gallery without feeling rather tense, so maybe I’m not your best guide to the art in The Shanghai Museum. All I can say is I probably understand how some men feel about going clothes shopping with their wives….
So I’m not going to show you any more pictures, even though they did get more colourful (a bit).
Roof 325
At the end of the day I went across People’s Square – a semi-circular space despite its name, as it is the southern half of the pre-revolution circular Shanghai Racecourse – to the building that used to be the racecourse clubhouse. The name of the restaurant had changed from that in my guidebook, it’s now called Roof 325, rather than Kathleen’s 5, but nonetheless I could still go up to the rooftop bar and order tea. The building has a clocktower modelled on Big Ben and in a way it, and the racecourse, stood for all that was decadent about 1930s Shanghai (no Chinese allowed). Anyway it was warm enough for me to go out onto the Terrace, where I could get a good view across the People’s Park (the place with the umbrellas on Sundays). As Richard was going to be out
Fruit and oolong tea
for the third evening this week, I decided to order afternoon tea in lieu of cooking myself dinner, but it turned out that Afternoon Tea is for two plus people and not for Billy No Mates like myself, so I had a pot of oolong tea and a plate of fruit instead.
The view across the park was lovely. Many new buildings have gone up on the ground where the horses used to run, but the architects have made good use of the space and the landscape gardeners have done a good job in the park, where magnolias and peach trees are now in flower.
Magnolias in flower People’s Square
Blossoming peach trees People’s Park
I made a panoramic view (of sorts) of the roof top view across the semi-circular People’s Park (Northern half of the racecourse) and round to the other half of the racecourse the People’s Square and round the back of the terrace to the clock tower:
The strange curved building in the bottom left picture is the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
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