Singapore & Shanghai

A short walk west from East Nanjing Pedestrian Street, nestled within the green space of People's Square is a meat market of sorts: here, parents put out posters to help find prospective marriage partners for their single children.

Walking into the park, we easily located the Marriage Market. On the ground, parents placed descriptions of their single children. Even with my limited Mandarin, I figured out that the posters listed attributes such as their year of birth (most were born in the 1980s), their height (but not their weight), their jobs and educational qualifications, where they live, and in some cases what kind of mate they were looking for. I only saw one poster with a photograph of the child, and that photo was likely outdated. A fair number of the kids were located in the US or Singapore.

There were quite a few parents in attendance, but none of their kids were to be seen. I can imagine their 40-something kids saying: "Mom/Dad, you're embarrassing me!".

After viewing the Marriage Market, we wandered the grounds and enjoyed the greenery.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shanghai-ma…Leer más

This was undoubtedly the highlight of our time in Shanghai. I read about the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center in Atlas Obscura, and I knew I had to visit. Located on the seventh floor of a nondescript office building, this private museum featured propaganda posters from 1949 onwards.

We had a great time viewing the various posters. Some of them were just simply jaw dropping; China certainly didn't shy from commemorating Tiananmen Square, hydrogen bombs, and commenting on race relations in the United States. Our favorite was a somewhat homoerotic poster celebrating the special relationship with between China and the former Soviet Union. This poster featured a young Chinese man and a young blond Russian man, each with an arm around the other, and with their other hand clasped around the other man's hand.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shanghai-pr…Leer más