SmartShanghai | [Offbeat]: Malu Grape Theme Park

[Offbeat]: Malu Grape Theme Park

By Fiona Campbell, Aug 18th, 2011 | In Activities

"Offbeat" is a SmartShanghai column about stuff to look at or do in Shanghai that's interesting or weird (relatively, of course), that doesn't fit anywhere else. It appears weekly, monthly, or maybe even annually, when we're not busy working on other superfluous column ideas.

Surely a standout in Shanghai’s line of randomly-themed theme parks, Malu Grape Theme Park in Jiading District is actually a vineyard founded in 2005, with “attractions” covering an area of approx 33 hectares. According to the blurb it’s “a comprehensive base with function of grape research, producing, planting, training and popularizing grape knowledge.”

A center for grape research then, with aims of popularizing grape knowledge, open to the public, at least until the end of the growing season, which finishes at the end of September. Go now if you’re interested in visiting a local vineyard or looking for something different to do with your Saturday.

The road leading to the park is thronged with touts encouraging you in to their vineyards -- pretty tempting actually, to explore the uncharted vineyard territories around Malu, but we pressed on for the genuine article. It’s 30rmb to get into Malu Grape Theme park, which you get at the main Visitor Center. The Visitor Center is actually a compulsory stop on the trip and we weren’t allowed in the vineyard until we’d sufficiently done the visit! Therein, you taste the variety of grapes on offer -- 4 types on our visit but we’re pretty sure one came from Carrefour. A fruit and veg expert with me swore it was a Thompson seedless…

Had your fill then it’s in to the vineyard proper.

And there you are, heading along Xiangyue Boulevard under the fruit bearing, with romantically entwined grape vines suggesting you could be in Tuscany. Carry on a little further -- past the Grape Guardians ensuring that the “no tasting or hiding grape” rule is enforced -- and you’re at the Pick Your Own area.

Grab a basket and enter the cavernous tunnel and find your qualified grape picker assistant (an ayi with scissors). From there, you’re looking around for that perfect bunch -- well, the bunch you think are perfect, your grape picker will have other ideas -- and after extensive discussion with your assistant, it’s back out again to the girl with the till to measure the weight of your find.

Grapes are 60rmbper kilogram, including the on-site discount -- 70rmb per kilogram at the shop outside the park. It’s very easy to overspend -- there were two of us and OK but seriously, do we really didn’t need 2.5kg of grapes? But we ended up getting our purple boxes with the rest of the throngs.

From there, you’re free to explore the rest of the vineyard, although there’s not much open to the public. The boulevards are the main pathways, with the growing areas being securely blocked. Understandable though, would you want the masses trampling through your polytunnels without a grape picker and a girl with a till in sight?

Pressing onwards though, you’ll come to the “Grape Knowledge Popularizing Gallery”, aka the history of the grape, which was nicely done and probably very interesting if you have a translator with you. There’s a sweet donkey that walks in circles in the Grinding Area, a petting farm with rabbits, rabbits, and goats, plus children’s play area to keep the little ones amused. Sadly, though, the lover’s area where you can sit on wooden benches under the entangled boughs and feed each other delicious grapes from the vine was closed….

Stay tuned for the next installment -- tripping out to Nanxiang. Tack that one on with this one and you have a fairly interesting day out.

Getting there: Ready for the Grape Escape? Take Metro line 11 to Malu Station, then either hop on Malu Line 1 Bus马陆一号线 which will deposit you outside the ‘Park’ or treat yourself to an orange taxi, starting at only 12rmb. The journey should cost you no more than 20元, 马陆葡萄主题公园， (Mǎlù pútáo zhǔtí gōngyuán), will get you there.

Malu Theme Park, 27 Dazhi Lu, near Liuxiang Gonglu, Malu Town, Jiading District 马陆葡萄主题公园, 嘉定区马陆镇大治路27号, 近浏翔公路, +86 21 5915 5240