This morning, Wu Dan and I had another interview with Xin Ge. She told us she is very busy with their new Natural History Museum project in the Jing’an District over in Puxi. Still, she was as straightforward, informative, and intelligent as ever! This is someone I would love to develop a real research project with in the future!

The most interesting parts of the discussion came, as ever, after the recorder was turned off. One part, which I did not really understand very well, was about displaying “specimens” (biaoben). I think it was something about how everything is becoming pictures and electronic representations, but I need Dan to help on that one, because I was confused by hearing “spacemen” when the Chinese word was translated for me! （Dan adds: 忻歌告诉我们，这个新的自然博物馆是这一届市政府的重点项目之一，某位领导非常重视，（sorry, I don’t get the name of the governor.）他提出的要求是要造出一个生动活泼的博物馆，要重视互动性，要有新鲜感。要打破以往人们对自然博物馆的固有印象。关于怎么样制造新鲜感。忻歌和其它一些专家有不同看法。有人提出动物标本的战士背景换成电影，而不是像现在一样是固定的绘画背景。如果用投影，可以制造出动物生前生活的环境，可以有一年四季的变化。视觉上更吸引人一些。但是忻歌持保留态度。她认为标本是死的，放在变化的电影背景前，效果不一定好，而且标本周围模拟的石头树木花草也都是固定的，不可能随着电影里四季的变化而变化。会给观众奇怪的感觉。这种展示方式是否合适，还需要进一步探讨。Chris’s translation: Xin Ge told us that the Natural History Museum is a key project for the government. A leader whose name we did not catch has placed great emphasis on it, demanding that the museum should be very vibrant, with much interactivity and originality. It has to sweep away people’s established ideas about Natural History Museums. Xin Ge and the other experts have different opinions about how to achieve this sense of something new. One person has suggested changing the painted backdrops they have now behind the animal specimens to projected backdrops. In this way, the environment can change with the seasons, and this will be more attractive. Xin Ge prefers to keep things as they are. The specimens are dead. Neither they nor the rocks and so on will change with the seasons like the film. The audience will think it’s weird. So they need to explore a bit more before deciding whether this is the way to go or not.）
Xin Ge also showed us a fascinating illustration in her notebook, which came from a meeting where they were trying to conceptualize their work. It showed various elements making up an exhibit, then an arrow to the word “story”, another arrow to “experience”, then another to “emotion” and a final arrow to “action.” She went on to say, in the context of a discussion we’d had about how much more embodied and corporeal the engagement is in the SSTM than in the London SM, where it seems to me more screen-mediated, that she wasn’t so bothered about whether they try touch-screens again or not. For her, the key issue is how to get to “action” regardless of the technologies involved, as in the example of getting visitors to start paying more attention to environmental protection. Somewhere in the same discussion, she also said that if the London Science Museum uses screens to give layers of information, the reason they don’t really do that at the SSTM is that they don’t think everything has to be done in the museum, and that they think with the limited time people have to visit (usually a half-day), they don’t want to stand at one exhibit digging deeper and deeper, but might follow up on that later, perhaps back in the classroom in the case of schoolkids.  So, here I think we see different philosophies and different usages of screens between London and Shanghai (never mind the 6 October Panorama!). When I get back to London, I must make another visit to the London SM to think a bit more about this. Meanwhile, I need to try to find time to go back to the SSTM one more time to think more about the “interactivity” of embodied engagement there and take some photos to go with that idea, if I can. Overall, I am getting more and more impressed with how uninhibited the kids are encouraged to be here, and how strongly the museum designers have been able to resist the push towards pedagogy from an older generation. I think this might be a real qualitative leap.

Even though she wrote it many years ago and clearly feels it is well past its use-by date, she gives us permission to translate her essay on interactivity and quote from it if we wish to.

When we first heard about the plan to scrap the AV Paradise and extend the Children’s Playground, Xin Ge told us that they were going to keep some of the exhibits and would sell some of them on to other museums. We can’t see any of the old exhibits anywhere in the museum. The nearest thing to it is a new version of the little actor thing (discussed yesterday). Xin Ge tells us that they have kept a couple of the exhibits, including the very popular Sydney Harbour boast simulator and the sound room, but they are in storage at the moment, as they figure out where to put them. The rest they have donated lock, stock and barrel to a new science museum that is being established in Inner Mongolia. That’s another aspect of the old and the new. What is now old in Shanghai becomes the newest thing in Inner Mongolia.

She acknowledged that a lot of the exhibits in the Children’s Playground weren’t working yet and that there were a lot of problems to be ironed out. Originally, it was planned that the kid would pick up different coloured bracelets. They would then hold them up to screens as they went around the different exhibits doing things, and get stars to attach to them as they finish each project. Possibly the colours of the stars vary according to their scores and they end up with a personalized bracelet. But the technology is not robust enough yet (was that the problem, Dan? (Dan: Yes. The main problem is at the gate of the gallery. Those machines to distribute empty bracelets often get stuck. Since the company to make the machine is good at software design rather than hardware design. They are repairing those machines now, but if they can’t or take too long, Xin Ge says they will choose other company to do this. They will not cancel the bracelet project.) and so the company that has developed this is still working on it. We discussed whether the sheer number of users was more than they could cope at the time when they opened, and also whether maybe Chinese kids are stronger than anyone realized! We also discussed the Chinese tendency to get the basic operation going and then fix it later, as opposed to the tendency elsewhere to delay an opening and complete all the testing and then open it, even if that entails delays (see my discussion of the subway above). Xin Ge explained that often the leadership has made a decision about a certain symbolically significant date, and so that has to be stuck to, even though ideally a later opening should be found.
Xin Ge also went through the whole process of how they decided to re-design the Children’s Playground over 2 years, which, I think will be a very useful breakdown once the interview is transcribed. If I understood correctly, it took more than a year to decide that the first exhibition hall they would like to renovate after being open for 8 years was the Children’s Playground. They decided on that because they thought it should be fairly manageable as a place to try this for the first time, they had noticed that it was overcrowded, and it needed updating. They also felt that it needed enlarging because, apart from this, there is very little in the museum for under-10s. They went to lots of other museums both in China and overseas to do comparisons, and they also consulted with experts on children, kindergartens, and so on. Later, having come up with the ideas, they gave the job to German company whose work Xin Ge had seen at another nearby museum (which one, Dan? Anting Motor Car Museum. West of Shanghai. The German company ATB). This company also designed the construction of the exhibits for the new BMW Museum in Munich. The actual construction was done locally.

In designing the new Children’s Playground, first they thought about dividing it according to function: a section on looking, a section on touching, and so on. But a kindergarten expert told them that small children cannot really discriminate between those different kinds of actions. They thought about having areas called “nature” and “energy” and so on. But every other museum does that and they wanted something new. So, then they came up with “light” as a theme, and figured out how to structure the exhibits around that. But that was also a bit abstract, although more original. Eventually, they got the idea of the rainbow theme, which is what they are using now. Of course, what interests me is that the rainbow is full of that sense of enchantment and wonder which we know is so important to getting anyone engaged with science.

We also spoke about the fact that there did not seem to be many instructions and that some of the exhibits were confusing to us. Xin Ge told us they want the kids to explore and work it out for themselves, although there are instructions on the walls if you really need them.

This evening I had dinner with Zhang Shujuan, a former student of Lu Xinyu who has made quite a lot of perceptive comments about our project before. Tonight, however, we spoke about the World Expo, which she has not been to. None of my Shanghai friends have gone to it. But they are all full of horror stories they have heard about it. Someone (I think Lu Xinyu) told me the locals got very upset when the German pavilion folk tried to make them line up in an orderly fashion, and they started chanting “Nazis, Nazis.” Then the Germans got offended and closed their pavilion for a day or two. Today, I heard from Shujuan that the Egyptians are upset because the Chinese visitors keep touching the ancient things in their pavilion. (So why have it where they can touch it?) It doesn’t sound like a fun day out to me.

T-shirts of the day. The well-upholstered matron with the angry look on her heavily made-up face sitting opposite me on the subway wears a T-shirt. Picked out in rhinestones across her chest are two huge words: DEADLY SINS. This evening, I see a very conventional-looking middle-man with a solid and square haircut and heavy glasses wearing a shirt that says “Camping Happy Boy.”

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