Why these two together
Both of the day's subjects sit in the same district and both reward the same habit: looking carefully at objects rather than reading labels. We start with the natural world and end with one of the city's working religious houses, which is a sequence that suits students and adults alike.
The vehicle stays with the group all day and the programme is built to be re-ordered - either collection can be taken first, depending on opening hours and how busy the galleries are.
The Shanghai Natural History Museum
The museum occupies a building in Jing'an Sculpture Park whose structure is derived from the shell of a spiral, which is why it is known locally as the green snail. It was approved as a project in 2007, broke ground in June 2009 and opened to the public in the second quarter of 2015, and it is one of the largest museums of its kind in Asia at 45,257 square metres of floor area.
Its collections run to more than 280,000 objects, of which about 11,000 specimens and models are on permanent display - over a thousand of those rare or protected species. The permanent galleries are organised on three lines: the movement of evolution, the scroll of life, and the epic of civilisation, and they cover ten named exhibition areas including the mysteries of origin, the river of life, the path of evolution, and the story of Shanghai. The single object every visitor remembers is the 26-metre blue whale suspended over the central hall.
Admission is ticketed and is included in the price shown.
Lunch
A local lunch in Jing'an.
The Jade Buddha Temple
The Jade Buddha Temple exists because of a journey. In 1882, the eighth year of the Guangxu reign, a monk named Hui Gen set out from Mount Putuo, travelled to Mount Wutai on pilgrimage, and then went on to Burma, where he commissioned five jade Buddhas to be carved. Passing back through Shanghai he was left with two of them - a seated figure and a reclining one - and a temple was built to house them, in the Song architectural manner. The seated Buddha is 1.95 metres high and was carved from a single block of jade.
The temple occupies about 11.6 mu with 8,856 square metres of building, arranged around three principal halls - the Hall of the Heavenly Kings, the Great Hall and the Jade Buddha Tower - with more than two hundred rooms besides. In 1983 the State Council listed it among the national key Buddhist temples of the Han region, and it remains a working monastery with resident monks rather than a museum. Dress and conduct expectations apply, and the guide will explain them before you go in.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
