Shenzhen's New Science Museum: My Roast (You've Been Warned!)
-
Wow, the Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum is definitely worth mentioning! I'd like to warn my friends who are planning a visit, especially those bringing their kids.
-
Parenting Experience:
- Many people (including me!) find that the exhibits in the museum may be too difficult for children to understand.
- Also, some interactive devices and restroom designs are not quite child-friendly.
- As for adults, honestly, it can get pretty noisy inside, making it hard to have a quiet reading experience.
- Sincere suggestion: Hope more effort can be placed on creating spaces for children and adolescents. Segregate different age groups and include more interactive activities that are easily accessible for kids. -
️Attention! A chaotic layout of the venue:
- The paths connecting different exhibition halls are very confusing. It's easy to wander into a completely unrelated hall.
- There are almost no signs to guide visitors!
- This is exactly what happened to me. I was watching an exhibit about brain exploration when suddenly, I ended up at the “origin of the universe.” After finishing up “the evolution of communication technology,” I quickly found myself in “smart mobility.” ("Smart Mobility" probably refers to future transportation technologies.) -
Some interactive devices confused me:
- For example, there’s this huge ride-on toy car for toddlers in the “Smart Mobility” Hall, with some rough 3D street view animations shown on an old-school screen. -
Exhibit Design and Experience:
- Most of the exhibitions felt a bit scattered with no coherent storyline or system.
- Just a bunch of colorful, mixed-up stuff.
- Important note: Various exhibit sounds intermixed create a mess for both ears and eyes! -
Aesthetic is somewhat outdated:
- The "Hello World" entrance area gives you a vibe from the 1990s with silver aluminum panels and early 21st-century LED screens. It looks a little out-dated and messy.
- Talking about the signage: The temporary entrances, ticket information, and signs within the venue are colored with a disastrous red/green combination, really hurting the eyes! I guess they might have been designed in Word 97's Text Effects function. -
Some decent halls:
- Slightly better ones might be the "Communication", "Origin of the Universe," and "Quantum Mechanics" Halls. -
Overall disappointment:
- Whether you talk about exhibit design, content planning, or venue operations, it seems to fall far behind other top science and space museums in Beijing and Shanghai. It feels like it’s being trampled.
- Scattered through the place are trendy terms such as "robots", "artificial intelligence (AI)", "communications", "virtual reality (VR)", "intelligent X", and "smart X". However, these bits and pieces feel thrown together like a large, only-for-show county temple fair. (In China, a county temple fair usually refers to traditional fairs held in small towns that may seem disorganized and commercialized, implying here that the content in the Science Museum is abundant but lacks depth). -
Personal background and final evaluation:
- I've been visiting various astronomy museums and science museums since 1999. I’ve seen many such places in major cities across China and North America.
- All I can say is that the overall level of this new Shenzhen Science Museum doesn't match either its city’s status or the expectations of residents.
- I won’t go back again. #ShenzhenScienceAndTechnologyMuseum
-
-
If you're an adult with a keen interest in technology, hoping for a new experience or to broaden your horizons, I wouldn't recommend it. If you're an adult who's already visited well-known science museums in major cities or abroad, there's really no need to go. However, if you're bringing kids who are full of energy, love to run around, and can't sit still, then it's a great place for them to burn off some steam! But if you're hoping your kids will quietly engage with the exhibits and learn something, then this probably isn't the place for them.
-
BeagleBookshop (小猎犬号) posted a note on Xiaohongshu, come check it out!
wTpFNDvRwXyEE59 http://xhslink.com/a/izfNsy1jEbldb. Copy this message and open the Xiaohongshu app to see the exciting content! -
I think there aren't enough of those game-like contraptions meant to engage kids. From what I've seen, 80% of the children treat it like a playground; very few are there to actually learn. Parents bringing a bunch of kids, especially little ones they still have to carry, won't see their children learn much—they're mostly just yanking on levers and causing damage. However, I feel the exhibits upstairs are higher quality than downstairs and haven't been damaged as much. The sections on space, the brain, and quantum mechanics are pretty good.
-
To put it bluntly, if they just set up a free ball pit and an inflatable castle, they could probably save half their maintenance budget. It would draw in all the kids who aren't there to learn anyway.
-
There will always be a bunch of inexplicable people who will come out to aggressively defend it, refusing to acknowledge or accept any criticism about this science museum. Is it that they just can't stand to hear anything negative said about it?
-
It just opened, so give it some time. You can't expect a newborn baby to start talking right away, can you?
-
Just here to take photos.
-
I think the experience is quite good; it feels very high-tech and there are many interactive exhibits. Of course, a new museum will always have areas that aren't perfect, but I'm sure it will continue to be optimized and improved over time.
-
The interactive experience at the Shenzhen Science Museum is fantastic! Kids can get hands-on with various experiments and activities, which is so much more effective than just being lectured at. For example, in the physics section, children directly experience the principles of mechanics by operating levers, pulleys, and other devices themselves. In the robot interaction zone, kids even played fun games with robots, their eyes filled with curiosity and fascination for technology. The exhibits here are cleverly designed to spark children's desire to explore and their creativity, helping them fall in love with science through play.
-
When I visited right after it opened, I thought the experience at the science museum was quite good, especially those cutting-edge 'black tech' interactive exhibits—they were really mind-expanding!
-
I just took my kid there last week. There's a lot of content, so you can't really see everything in just one visit. My child had a great time. A new museum definitely needs time to be polished and refined, and I hope they'll offer evening hours in the future.
-
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion; if you don't like it, don't just bash it. Opinions should be based on facts—that's the scientific spirit. Anyway, I think it's pretty good. Each exhibition area has its unique theme and displays, covering everything from basic scientific principles to cutting-edge technological applications.
-
Everything starts out imperfect and gets better. Give it some time, watch it gradually develop, and you'll likely feel differently about it as it grows.