On Friday, the adrenaline or whatever it is that has propelled me through the first month just disappeared. I sat on the sofa for about 3 hours then decided that, as I was clearly not going to achieve anything much, I’d go to the Shanghai Museum for a couple of hours of artefacts.

It is enormous so I didn’t try to do it all, and I certainly didn’t join the massive queue for the special exhibition (the British Museum’s history of the world in 100 objects. I would love to see it but the queue is ridiculous). I wandered through jades (I am so ignorant: I expected them to be green) and Ming and Qing furniture, which I really enjoyed and where I learnt that Imperial dragons have five toes and normal dragons, four. (And I have since found out that Japanese dragons have three.)

Here is an intricate carved table and chairs (I still have no proper photo editing software, soz).

I then went to the calligraphy gallery, where I marvelled at how old it all was but didn’t linger because of not being able to read anything. It is still beautiful.

Then pots. I somehow entered the exit so went back in time from modern ceramics to ancient clay lumps, against the tide. But some people were doing the individual galleries clockwise and some anticlockwise, so apart from a certain lack of logic it didn’t matter. So many pots! The museum will definitely need several visits. Here are a few of my favourite things (when the dog bites, etc) although I don’t seem to have photographed any of the really charming three-legged pots.

 A bird feeder, which made me think of Grandma.

 Some lady musicians, from about 1500 years ago

And then onto the massive bronze gallery, where I took lots of very poor quality pictures of very lovely things. I liked the things decorated with animals and the gallery of bells.