I am colorblind, coffee black and egg white...

Over the Chinese New Year holidays, I tried to make the most of my free time to actually visit Shanghai and see what was happening in the heart of this busy city. I started with several art exhibitions: Murakami and his flowers, Ding Yi and his work on crosses, Robert Cahen and his travel videos... It was great to see that Shanghai was a city where art had a place, and I really enjoyed these exhibitions.

On Sunday 22 January – the actual Chinese New Year’s Eve –, from 6pm to 6am the next morning, you could hear fireworks being endlessly shot by citizens all around the city. At around 10pm, I went up to the 25^th floor of my block of flats and looked outside the window: it was magical! Thousands of multicoloured fireworks where covering the city sky and giving Shanghai its own heartbeat... It really felt like the city was alive and expressing its happiness. It was beautiful!

Later on that week, I went to the Shanghai Museum – which houses beautiful remains from centuries of Chinese history – and I elbowed my way through the overcrowded YuYuan Gardens – which is one of the last places in Shanghai where you can still see traditional homes and feel like you’re back in time...

Finally, on the last weekend of the holidays, I met up with Liz – an Art teacher at my school – and we went to The Museum of Contemporary Art – a.k.a. MoCA – where we enjoyed this great exhibition of a Chinese fashion photographer called Chen Man, whose work reminded me of David LaChapelle... We then went to the Shanghai Art Museum which had an impressive Miro exhibition going on. How deliciously cultural!