Around Town

2015-05
Natural History Museum Throws Open Its Doors
The new museum has just opened in Jing’an Sculpture Park with attractions including roaring dinosaur models, sure to capture the imagination of any child. The museum has nearly 290,000 specimens, with 11,000 on display at a time. However, we suggesting waiting a few weeks before planning a trip, as visitors were queuing around the block to get a peak inside during the first week of opening. The museum will be open from Tuesday to Sunday between 9am and 5:15pm.
 
Boosting The “Beautiful Game”
Shanghai education authorities have made an effort to boost the uptake of football amongst primary and high school students following calls from President Xi Jinping to improve the way in which the “beautiful game” is taught in schools, with the long-term goal of seeing the national side perform better on the world stage. Authorities aim to build the infrastructure to support its development and nurture talent through programmes run across 1,500 schools. Now they just have to convince anxious parents to allow children some time away from their academic work!
 
Best English Name
A 25-year-old American entrepreneur, Lindsay Jernigan, based in Shanghai, has launched a service to try and stop Chinese people from picking strange sounding English names. www.bestenglishname. com aims to banish such names as Apple, ABC and Angel from the city and instead replace them with something more suited to their character. Jernigan offers clients the option to pay RMB 50 and take a quiz that will generate five different name choices or consult with her via an online chat or face-to-face meeting with prices starting at RMB 120. Jernigan can also take into account special requests such as relevance to zodiac signs of the Chinese five elements.
 
Helicopter High Life
Sightseeing flights by helicopter are now being offered in Shanghai. Two companies, Kingwing General Aviation Co and Shanghai KaiJet General Aviation, both offer pleasure flights that will last between five and 20 minutes, however, no price for such a trip had been released as we went to print. Last month, the Public Security Bureau (PSB) Shanghai Aviation Force also conducted an official test landing of an EC 135 helicopter on The Peninsula Shanghai’s helipad. It’s time to take to the sky, Shanghai.