You may have heard of the sex museum in Shanghai or even the tea museum in Hangzhou. But have you heard about the museum dedicated to shoes or the one to chopsticks?
These are among a group of small and private museums in Shanghai where visitors usually have to press the front door bell to gain entry, provided the owner is home, and is in the mood to see you.
They are not typical and this also means they must struggle to stay open, although some privately owned folk museums in Shanghai are gaining increasing popularity among tourists, says Wu Shaohua, president of the Shanghai Collectors Association.
At the same time, however, without proper management, many private museums are facing trouble and some are closing down owing to a shortage of operating funds.
"Private collections are the repository of folk culture and reflect the changes in people's lifestyles," says Wu. "They are of great value in historical and sociological studies."
Each of the private museums is organized around something specific. For example, chopsticks, ancient shoes and Peking opera costumes are among the collections of the estimated 120 private collectors in Shanghai. They rent exhibition rooms, half of which reach the scale of a private museum and are regularly open to the public, according to Wu.
Lan Xiang's chopstick museum, Bao Wanrong's museum of Peking opera costumes, Yang Shaorong's museum of antique shoes and Tsai Bochang's lottery ticket museum are among those identified as private museums.
In addition, six private museums have licenses from the Shanghai Cultural Relics Bureau, usually given to private museums with collections of cultural relics. Licensed museums include Tsai's lottery ticket museum and Yang Yuxin's teapot museum. But a license is not the sole criterion to judge small museums.
"Since the license is for museums with 'cultural relics', those which display items such as chopsticks are excluded," says Wu.
The vast majority of private collections, however, remain in "exhibition rooms" rather than in private museums. A private museum, explains Wu, has four functions: preservation, exhibition, contribution to research and education. Exhibition rooms are often only focused on preservation and exhibition, he says, and is hindered by insufficient exhibition space and other factors.
Most private museums in Shanghai are free or charge only a small fee and try hard to survive. Most don't qualify for government funds.
"Owing to a shortage of funds, a lot of collectors are exhibiting their collections in the same house in which they live," says Wu. Although they are small and operate out of their home, museums need funds to preserve, maintain and expand their collections. And as they expand, they need more space and the money to rent space.
Yang Shaorong, a highly recognized collector of shoes that were used when women had to bind their feet, known as "three-inch golden lilies", is finding it hard to stay open.
"Years ago, I sold 100 pairs of lily shoes to a Canadian collector, with great pain, to raise funds for a bigger apartment to display my shoes," says Yang, 71. "I knew that once those shoes were gone, they would never again be found in China, but I simply had no choice."
The retired technician, who worked with the Shanghai Fourth Radio Factory, started collecting lily shoes more than 20 years ago.
"I accidentally found one pair of lily shoes among my grandma's things and decided to start a collection." At first, Yang's family resisted his decision because collecting was expensive, but they became supportive after they learned the shoes would increase in value and realized it was a great way to "preserve and showcase the old Chinese culture".
He now runs a curio shop on the second floor at Shanghai Yunzhou Curio Town and sells antiques, such as porcelain and jade objects, and puts the profits back into his museum. He also sells some of his shoes, including replicas.
Yang is lucky to be able to maintain his shoes because many other private collectors have had to close. On the other hand, Tsai Bochang, for example, is able to keep his unique lottery ticket museum open because he can remain financially independent.
Tsai owns a printing factory and has built a 700-sq-m museum in proximity to his factory in Zhangjiang town. Like Yang, Tsai started his collection 20 years ago. His collection includes 600 old lottery tickets, spanning 200 years. His visitors are split between Chinese and foreigners. Lottery tickets in the late 1800s and early 1900s, says Tsai, were written in characters rather than numbers.

"Sometimes, numbers were tied to the legs of homing pigeons, and the first pigeon that returned was deemed to carry the winning numbers," says Tsai.
Some collectors are finding new ways to stay alive, such as working with the local tourist bureau by accepting financial support in exchange for local governments using the museum to promote tourism. One such example is Bao Wanrong's Peking Opera costumes museum near Fengxian beach, also a tourist destination.
The importance of preserving such collections remains a passion for many.
"Private museums have collections that cannot be found in state-owned museums, and visitors can see the objects up close and also communicate face-to-face with the collectors, all of which make private museums unique. We just need to find a proper way to manage them," says Wu.