2013-01 Red Town Sculpture Garden and Creative Zone

Red Town is a sculpture garden and "creative zone" built among the remains of the No. 10 Steel Factory in southwest Shanghai.  Many of the buildings are made from red brick, so I a guessing that is where the name comes from.  I stumbled across this place during one of my weekend quests for geocaches.  I think that is the only way I would have ended up there as even some of the locals I spoke with after I visited there were not aware of the area.

On the way to Red Town, I walked through a nearby park and found an area where elderly gentlemen would bring birds in cages and hang them from the trees and put them on the ground.  I think they may have been for sale, but I can't say for sure.





Walking between the parks, I ran across the first sculptures, in the form of a band jamming on the grass.  A little soundtrack in the background would have been fantastic although behind me the street was pretty busy.
The park itself has a large open area filled with many statues.  This is surrounded by buildings which house cafes, art studios, galleries, shops and training centers.

The first item I noticed as I walked into the area was full size car made of bricks and mortar.  It was very detailed--check out the detail on the tire treads.






 Up against one of the buildings was a sculpture of two ladies sitting on a bench.  From a distance they looked somewhat lifelike, although oversized, there was a lot of detail work done on the statues







 In the large open area was about a dozen 10' tall legs painted in various colors.  Some seemed to be modeled after flags of various countries.  When I first got there, a large group of young ladies were all getting their photo taken while peeking out from behind the legs.  They were giggling and laughing and having a real good time






 The next item was an abacus for the digital age with a modern keyboard and beads for the display.  Kids loved playing on this, and it took a couple of times around the park before I could get a photo without people climbing all over it.





On the perimeter of the park in front of some of the shops was the statue of the clowns on a bicycle built for 5.   On my way out, I saw the large rose (it was about 3 ft across) up against one of the buildings.  The natural patina was very colorful and beautiful.  It was also difficult to photograph and make it look as vivid in a photos as it did in real life.  I took about half a dozen shots to get one that I was satisfied with.