Shanghai House of Horrors

This morning, we made our way down to the Bund. It is about a 4 blocks from our hotel. It was a nice walk, but it is snowing and wet. It turns out that cloudy, snowy & wet feels colder than 10 degrees cooler but sunny and dry. So this afternoon we decided to go to something inside near our apartment hotel.

The Bund is full of fancy stores and nice early 1900s architecture.

We decided to visit the place we now call the Shanghai House of Horrors (aka The Shanghai Museum of Natural History) because it was only a block and a half away.

Remember when I said the Beijing Science & Technology museum was a little different from an American museum? Well, I didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. Todays museum was MUCH MUCH weirder.

To set the stage, there were signs every 10 feet saying “NO RUNNING AND SHOUTING” and yet there were hundreds (if not THOUSANDS) of kids running and screaming through every inch of the museum. It was also practically unheated (there were a few useless space heaters). I saw a thermometer that said 50 degrees. It wasn’t much warmer inside than it was outside. The paint was peeling like crazy and the whole place was in a sad state of disrepair.

It started off innocently enough with dinosaurs. Of course, we had to understand they weren’t just any dinosaurs, they were Chinese dinosaurs. A guide followed me around and told me which province each one came from repeatedly. Clearly, this museum wasn’t just about natural history, it was about Nationalistic Pride.

Then we went into another section where we were greeted with this lovely display:

Real live (Ok, not exactly alive. They were definitely dead) baby fetuses. Six of them demonstrating each of the first 6 months in the womb, I think. Now, I have loved the Mutter Museum where there is a ton of weird and gross stuff, but this was still a little bit yucky to me.

Even better (or worse), was when we entered the area with a display about human races. Apparently, according to this museum, there are three: Asian, Caucasoid and African (Where are the Native north & south Americans in this trichotomy? This is unclear.). I couldn’t read most of the descriptions of what was presented, but we drew some conclusions about them based on the displays.

For example, look at this serene Asian couple. She is carrying a vase for modesty. They look quite civilized. (Unfortunately for the man, his groin region was sporting a very small member in the middle of a mess o’ pressed-in-clay fingerprints. I noticed this because every child who walked by studied it closely. I might also add that if this was supposed to be a racial representation, it didn’t do much to dispute the Asian small penis stereotype.)

Mr. A hangs with his people.

The Caucasoid people were represented by some fine, refined, Grecian specimens. (And because I am really a 13 year old boy, I couldn’t help but laugh and imagine it saying Cock-asoids because of the white guy’s on-display member.)

M with a white guy and his thing.

Then there was the display of Africans. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there is just something very wrong about the selected poses. They guy is playing a drum (member covered completely, probably due to Chinese inferiority complex) and the woman shaking everything, presumably dancing. I think she has a loincloth on.

A weird diagram of racial categories of noses, nose holes and head shapes.

Anyone who has spent much time in China (heck, I have hardly been here at all and even I have been able to figure this out!) knows that there is a pretty clear undercurrent of racism/Chinese superiority in the culture. But seeing on display was like being transported back to the pre-civil rights days. There were many other displays that had subtle and not so subtle indications of exactly who was superior (Asians then whites and Africans clearly at the bottom — practically monkeys!)

It was just so very weird. And wrong.

I am guessing that someone has previously pointed out the inaccuracies of these exhibits because there is a sign explaining they were designed in 1972 and 1975. Due to limitations of “time, ability, and financial capacity”, the exhibits “might have many shortcomings.”

Uh, you think?

The other exhibits were horrifying in a completely different way. There were many stuffed and pickled specimens that have definitely seen better days. There was an overwhelming smell of preservatives that made both Mr. A and my stomaches hurt.

We called these guys the Zombie Seals. The dusty eyeballs on the animals didn’t help their appeal much.

I don’t know what this is, but it was clearly rabid or something.

I couldn’t get a picture of the stuffed panda, because there was a mass of school kids blocking it while a guide told them about how special it was and how it was clearly the most evolved of all bears. (Just kidding, I don’t know for sure that is what he was saying, but I suspect it is true.)

I didn’t take any pictures of the pickled amphibians, repiles and fish, but they were so so gross. They were all white-ish and floating in some kind of liquid that had other stuff floating/growing in it too. Blech.

Last but not least, there were two human mummies. They were off by themselves and no one told me I couldn’t flash a picture right in their mummy faces, so I did.

Yuck.

Shhh. This is a Chinese mummy, but it has black skin. Don’t tell the Chinese!

We left feeling physically ill and kind of scandalized. M was quite freaked out by the dead fetuses and the mummies. Mr. A and I found the jars of dead animals to be overwhelmingly gross and the stuffed ones so creepy and disgusting I can’t really describe it without reliving the trauma.

So if you are in Shanghai, mark this museum off your list. You will thank me if you don’t ever visit it.