A Visit to SNM and SAM

On this Wednesday, I went to the Singapore National Museum as well as Singapore Arts Museum in the afternoon. I thought it was going to be a boring journey, but I was wrong. The experience there somehow impressed me. Actually I did not like visiting places like museums for I do not like history. However, this visit in a way changed my opinion. We first arrived at the national museum and after a short wait, we began to have a visit of the Singapore History Museum. To my surprise, everyone was given an electronic device which was specially made for visitors to listen to the introductions and explanations in each area. We put on the headphones and then respectively began our history journey. I followed the instructions to a big hall and there was a song being played and it was going like this “Singapore, Singapore… ”. A specially shot video was played around us on the wall. After that we went down to the 1^st floor and then entered the old times of Singapore. Just after a few basic introductions, there were two ways before me, one is personal story and one is the event sequence. Although most people chose the latter, I decided to choose a different way to learn about the history. I learnt the foundation of Singapore and the development of its economy and even the life details of the ordinary people at that time. What impressed me most is the World War II in Singapore for I came from China, which was also suffering from the invasion of Japanese. I saw the pictures and heard the sound; I was shocked by the cruelty of war hoping that there will be no war at all in the future. At 3 o’clock, we went to our second destiny----SAM. At the second floor, we saw some strange but meaningful exhibitions, they are interesting but some of them are really difficult to understand its meaning. Then we enter a special exhibition at a corner and I was totally shocked and frightened by the exhibition there because it was all about the dark side of human society, including death and violence and some seemingly ridiculous things. We spent half an hour in that special exhibition area and finally could not bear the uncomfortable atmosphere there and then quickly left. Generally, SAM is a place for new ideas but also for old topics. Compared with SAM, I prefer SNM more because the visit there really dragged me into it. However, I did not have enough time to finish all of it. So maybe next time, when I am free and do not have to hurry, I will go through it again and look for more details!