Why a day in Pudong
Shanghai teaches transport and astronomy in the same direction. The Maglev demonstration line runs between Longyang Road station and Pudong International Airport and is the first commercial high-speed maglev in the world; the Astronomy Museum sits further south on the Pudong coast at Lingang. Both are reachable in one day and neither is on a standard city itinerary.
We start at Longyang Road, ride the line as far as the airport, and then drive south to Lingang. On the way the guide sets out what the two places have in common: both are built on the idea that a very large gap - between cities in one case, between the earth and everything else in the other - can be closed by engineering and by instruments.
The Maglev line
The Shanghai Maglev Demonstration Line opened on 31 December 2002 and has carried passengers commercially since 27 April 2006. It runs about thirty kilometres, mostly elevated, and was designed for a maximum operating speed of 430 km/h, which makes it the fastest scheduled passenger service in the world. The technology is an attraction system rather than a repulsion one: electromagnets in the train and coils in the guideway hold the vehicle about a centimetre clear of the track, so there is no wheel contact at all.
Tickets are bought on the day at the station and are not included in the price shown; a same-day boarding pass earns a discount on the single fare. Where the group would rather ride than lecture, the guide keeps the commentary short and lets the speed do the work.
Lunch
A local lunch on the Pudong side.
The Shanghai Astronomy Museum
The museum opened on 17 July 2021 on a site of about 58,600 square metres with some 38,000 square metres of building, which makes it the largest planetarium by building scale anywhere. Its three principal exhibition zones - Home, Universe and Journey - are arranged so that you look back at the earth three times from three different directions, and the roughly 300 objects on display are unusually original: 85 per cent of them were made for this building rather than bought in, and more than half are interactive. The experience is closer to a staged narrative than to a gallery of instruments, which is either its great strength or its great fault depending on what your group has come for.
Admission is ticketed and is included in the price shown. The museum is a very long way from the city centre, which is precisely why we pair it with the Maglev rather than with anything in Puxi.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
