Shanghai Street View: Modernizing Museums and Retiring Restaurants

This week’s Street View takes us to historic Jing’an District, where a pair of headlines are spotlighting the closing of a storied expat landmark and the opening of a new museum that’s likely to become one of our city’s top future attractions.

News junkies will recognize the second item as the newly opened, state-of-the-art Shanghai Natural History Museum, which was flooded with visitors in its first days of operation. Far fewer people will know that the once ground-breaking but now faded expat hangout Malone’s is preparing to close its doors, after losing its relevance among much of the city’s foreign community.
Once again, this pair of stories nicely illustrates the many contrasts between the old and new in Shanghai, as our city tries to retake its place as one of Asia’s most international cities.

In this case Malone’s qualifies as historic because it was one of the first privately-owned foreign-style restaurants in contemporary Shanghai, even though it only opened 21 years ago. Meantime, the Natural History Museum represents a new generation of cutting-edge Chinese museums that can compete with global peers, replacing an older group that felt more like cluttered storage rooms than real tourist attractions.

The new museum deserves to take center stage this week, as it sounds like a truly world class attraction. I haven’t personally visited yet, partly because this kind of opening typically draws huge crowds, which was certainly the case this time.

According to media reports, the lines were so long at the museum next to the Jing’an Sculpture Park that officials had to stop admitting people several times on its opening day due to overcrowding. Many were so eager to get inside that they even ignored signs posted in the afternoon advising them to leave and return another day.

The new museum has been in the planning stages for quite a while, and took 5 years to actually build. Unlike the earlier Natural History Museum on Yan’an Road that was famous for its dinosaurs, the new one is more animated and interactive. It includes exhibits like dinosaurs that move and roar, following a global trend that caters to a wide range of visitors, including younger ones who aren’t always interested in lots of reading and stagnant exhibits.

The museum is just the latest in a growing number of such world-class attractions springing up in Shanghai. Some of my other favorites include the China Art Museum at old World Expo site, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium in Lujiazui and the privately owned Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center on Huashan Road, a favorite among foreigners. Shanghai certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on these new world-class museums, and one of my other favorites was the history-oriented Shanxi provincial museum in Taiyuan, which I visited over Chinese New Year.

These big, spacious and well organized museums contrast sharply with the older generation of dusty venues that used to be the norm in China and are still common in smaller cities. During my travels in the 1980s I remember occasionally visiting such venues, which were housed in buildings that were often poorly lit, and included displays that were poorly protected and included little or no explanation.

While venues like the new Natural History Museum spotlight Shanghai’s move into the 21st century, Malone’s seems firmly rooted in the past and was probably due for retirement a few years ago. The American-style bar and restaurant was extremely ground-breaking when it became one of Shanghai’s first foreign-owned and operated western-style eateries in 1994 on Tongren Lu. At that time it instantly became a hit with the city’s small community of expats who previously could only enjoy such bars and food in the very limited field of hotels that catered to foreigners.

I also discovered Malone’s when I first came to Shanghai to live in 2005, and was a fan for a while of its hamburgers and weekend brunches. But the place really seemed to decline in recent years, and the last time I went several years ago it felt more like a tired and divey bar than a nice place to sit and enjoy a drink or meal. I’m sure that rising rents probably also played a part in the owner’s decision to close, which will happen next month.

I’m sometimes quite nostalgic about this kind of thing, but in this case admit I’m unlikely to return to Malone’s for a final drink or meal before its closure. Endings like this are always a bit sad, but they also reflect the constantly changing nature of any urban landscape and the need for constant innovation to survive and remain relevant.

At the end of the day I have no doubt that Malone’s will find a place in the Shanghai history books. But its glory days are clearly gone as it and other similar aging pioneer attractions get overtaken by a smarter, newer generation of venues like the Natural History Museum.