The first school trip of the year was to the Children’s Palace.

The Children’s Palace is housed in a grand building that was once known as the “Marble House”. Built between 1918-1931, it has marble lined hallways, wide curving staircases and a large front hall complete with ornate fireplaces, grand chandeliers and French windows. A wealthy Jewish businessman from England built the Marble Hall. The marble was imported from Italy. In the late 40’s, the owner and his family moved to Hong Kong. The Hall was left vacant for many years. Madam Song Quinglin received permission to use the hall for activities for gifted children. In 1953, the Marble Hall officially become the Children’s Palace. In 2001, the shanghai government renovated the hall.

Children participate in a wide range of extracurricular activities including music, dance, art, model making, science, technology and computer science. The palace hosts many art performances and science and technology contests which attracts thousands of youngsters.

Once we arrived, we went to the theater for a performance by the children. These children practice on weekends and after school. The children range in age from 8-19 years old. The performance for us on this day was a Chinese acrobat performance. The performance was very impressive with the typical Chinese acrobat of balancing, climbing and dancing.

I don’t have any photos as I was having camera issues. The camera wasn’t reading the card. I tried to fix it by popping the card out and back in, but it didn’t work. Therefore, no photos of the day.

After the performance, the children played on the Adventure playground followed by snack. As we were finishing our snack and it was time to go home, it began to rain. It was a fun field trip for the kids and adults.