(smartshanghai.com)
Updated: 2008-05-04 15:26

Passive

Shanghai Sculpture Garden

Want to soak up some art as well as a little sunshine? Head as far east as you can on Huaihai Lu to Shanghai's one and only sculpture garden. This outdoor hotbed of creativity boasts a few eye-opening pieces and the theme seems to be "oversized." You should know you're in the right place when you see a massive steel computer as well as a collection of gigantic legs speckling the grass. If humongous isn't to your taste, the car made out of bricks is an entertaining spectacle. Should it start to rain, you can always duck inside the covered portion, which is chock-full of sculptures by international and local artists. The complex boasts a couple of cafes and restaurants as well, (Beca Cafeis our favorite) if you'd like to make a day out of it.

Acrobats at Shanghai Centre Theatre

Far too often expats reserve the acrobat show for when friends and relatives come to visit Shanghai. Let us assure you, there is nothing shameful in hitting up the Portman Theatre for 90 minutes of plate-spinning and rope-swinging. These tiny limber things (the acrobats) have drummed up so many types of balancing you could not begin to conceive the possibilities. Yes, small children and grizzled old people enjoy this show. But come on, who doesn't like phallic jokes in a language they can't understand? The people who run the acrobats show make a lot of claims about online ticketing, English-speaking hotlines and various other "easy" ways to get tickets. But the most efficient means to procure your pass is to stop by the concierge desk at the Portman and pick up a ticket five minutes before showtime. Show starts at 7pm.

Bund Galleries

While you're down at the Bund checking out river cruises and the like, stop into Studio Rouge'soriginal venue, the Victorian-era building in the former British Concession. Cheng Wei's solo exhibition "Serve the People" is a series of colorful, pop-art renditions of the China liberation trucks -- the symbol of China's socialist reconstruction. Mass media slogans such as "Long Live Chairman Mao" and "Fight Selfishness, Repudiate Revisionism" adorn the paintings. After doing you part in the fight against selfishness, you can wander about one block west of Studio Rouge to find Contrastsgallery, currently hosting "When I Look at It." In this exhibition Spanish artist Isidro Blasco recreates Shanghai by nailing together variously sized and shaped wooden panels, which he covers in crisp photography. The results are disjointed, three-dimensional life-size visions of the insanity that characterizes this city.

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