Into the Expo

Its taken long enough, I know, but at last I bring you the expo post. I finally went to the Expo 2010 in Shanghai this week, and here I’ll share with you my impressions of the site and the event.

Some of you reading this definitely know of the expo, a few might actually know what it really is, and maybe one or two of you have actually been there. For pretty much everyone else, here’s some background information:

Also known as “World’s Fair”, these expos have their roots in the London Great Exhibition of 1851.
Back then, this one guy in the UK’s royalty had the idea to try to create some sort of exhibition at which the products of the Industrial Revolution could be presented to people who would really have no idea what any of these things were, since, you know, machines didn’t really exist prior (except for in the most rudimentary ways, I know I know).

After that first Exhibition, the Expo/World’s Fair had a spotty history for another hundred years, and its really only in the past few decades that we’ve decided to connect all of these in one continuity. At some point people thought it was a pretty cool idea and decided to hold them semi-regularly, and so a committee was established and cities/countries campaigned to bring it to their home turf. For a pretty long time, it was actually more prestigious to be the host of the World’s Fair than the Olympics.

This changed somewhere in the last fifty years or so, and now people mostly scratch their head when this stuff is mentioned. The name World’s Fair certainly sounds familiar to a lot of people, but when pressed on it, few are ever able to give any details about what they think its composed of.

By manner of illustration, the World’s Fair has been responsible for bringing our world some of its most recognizable architecture (mostly towers), most notably the Eiffel Tower (built at the World’s Fair of 1889 in Paris), but for American readers also the Space Needle tower of Seattle, which came from a 1962 Expo there.

It was at the middle of the 20^th century that World’s Fairs started to be called Expos, and it was also then that the emphasis shifted away from industrial showcasing (previous products debuted at these fairs most notably includes the telephone) to national showcasing, which remains the focus today.

This is a little difficult for most people to understand, even people who are well acquainted with the format of the Expo. More or less, though, many of the world’s countries come together and create national pavilions through which to try to brand their country in some distinct way. It becomes a big spending spree for countries to try to one up each other in originality and, well, coolness. Some of these pavilions sell things, but for the most part there’s little in the way of tangible effects to be had from the creation of these pavilions, leading many to wonder what the point and benefit really is.

As best I understand it, there is a two-part answer to this. The first, and probably most important, is to remember that not all aspects of our governments are supposed to have practical impacts. Although, in society’s modern incarnation, we tend to be very practical-minded people, ever since governance first existed in the smallest of tribes, there have always also been ritual responsibilities that our governments would take care of as well. In the United States in particular, its harder for people to remember this at times, because we don’t have a separate office for the person who takes care of all of our most important ceremonial tasks; that person, the president, also takes care of our more important practical tasks.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the queen and royalty in general are still around for exactly that reason, a separate ceremonial wing. Sure, they nominally have some practical powers as well, but we all know that those are mostly vestigial and never practiced anymore. Many other European countries follow this sort of model, such as Sweden, Denmark, Spain, etc.

My point is that there comes a time in government’s duties where they do things that only have symbolic importance. The expo is like a group symbolic ceremony, in my eye. Its good and cathartic every now and then to have a collective exercise of patriotism that isn’t deemed as threatening in any way.

Aside from that, there’s always the hope and desire for long term soft influence effects, that the people who come to visit these expos will come away from them knowing more about a variety of countries that they might never have interacted with otherwise through the course of their life, and that the increased goodwill in relations and understandings can be beneficial in many indirect ways.

This second part is extremely optimistic, for reasons I’ll address later, and I think mostly faulty.

A third reason could be mentioned for this particular expo, which is that everyone and their dog knows that China has money nowadays, which didn’t used to be the case, and that although there’s still a lot of crushing poverty in the country, the country is big enough to also have a large number of big spenders, and big spenders have the means to spend that money in other countries, or at least on the products of other countries. So, yay advertisement.

Then, for China, of course, there’s a fourth reason, which really is just a heightened version of the first reason. Hosting the Olympics and Expo within one cycle of each other is largely considered a major coup for the country, and though a lot of regular people on the streets of the world don’t really give a damn, the international community, such as it is, DOES notice, and it does leave an impression.

Ever since I knew I was coming to Shanghai, the “Expo” or 世博会 (romanized to Shibo hui) has entered my lexicon, and I’ve learned it well. Arriving in Shanghai, it took approximately 0.035 seconds before beginning to see advertisements all over the damn place for it. In particular, the Shanghai Expo 2010 has a mascot, named Haibao. He looks like this:

He is also the devil.

Let’s go back in time, to the summer of 2009, before I departed for Asia. At one point, I was visiting with a UCSD professor named Thad Kousser, whom I had a course with the previous summer, and talking about my aspirations and such. He was actually the first person to mention the expo to me that I can recall, and he had been given a little doll of Haibao at some conference he had attended, and showed it to me, explaining that he had been told that the character was designed to look like the Chinese character 人, which means people. I wouldn’t really argue against that, bu t you can decide for yourself, I suppose!

Anyway, so there’s Haibao. In addition to his dastardly little visiage, inescapable and ever-watching, there’s also a lot of other noticeable things around Shanghai in regards to the Expo. The most important, on a practical level, is the extension of the metro system, which has included the opening of a couple of new lines and the lengthening of a couple others, including a line that connects the western and eastern airports with plenty of stops in between, which is super nice, as well as a line that connects a lot of the major tourist attractions (and incidentally is pretty close to where I live), although that one closes at the puzzling time of 4pm.

There’s also a lot of quiet changes, like the addition of something like 20,000 more taxis to the fleet already existing, and then the city government’s attempts to police such things as various as spitting and wearing pajamas outside, with the goal of trying to “clean up” the image of the average Chinese citizen to be more presentable to the world abroad. These questionable goals have produced just as questionable of results, but whatever.

It opened May 1^st, and will continue through to October 31^st, with a variety of special events punctuating it. I applied to work through a student ambassador program organized by the University of Southern California, but to no success, so instead I was relegated to being a spectator. I knew I’d have to go at least once before I left Shanghai, so I finally made my move this past Wednesday.

Entrance isn’t cheap, for a Chinese person, at about the equivalent of 25 USD to get in. For us foreign folk, though, not so bad. I had already collected a good amount of heads up info on what to do/not do at the expo. Mainly, there are a dozen or so pavilions that, if you want to enter, you must sell your firstborn son and then tapdance on the head of a pin while reciting the alphabet backwards. In all honesty, though, some of the pavilions have an average of 2+ hours waiting time to get in, topped by the ludicrous Saudi Arabian pavilion average waittime of around 6 hours, just because it has the biggest 3D IMAX screen in the world and a silly ten minute video playing on it.

I’ve got a few friends who work there, or who have worked there, in various capacities, and they’ve all given me their recommendations for best places to check out. So I headed in with that in mind.

I started kind of late, arriving at 2pm. There were this many people in line to enter:

Which is to say no one. I don’t know if its just because I was at an alternate entrance, and that maybe the main entrance was swamped, but I was a bit shocked by the almost complete lack of people in a fairly large radius around this entrance. Anyway, I bought a ticket at a totally nonsensical storefront away from the entrance on a street nearby, because they dont actually sell them at this gate, at least, and then mozied on in.

I was starting in the eastern end of the southern half of the expo site. It covers both banks of the river in a decent sized radius, big enough that they had to evict 55,000 people from the area a year ago or whatever in order to make room. I’m quite positive those 55,000 people were given close to no compensation.

Anyway, this part of the site was dedicated to “Asia” such as they define it. The very first pavilion I saw was that of Kazakhstan:

Apparently they weren’t too concerned with the look of their pavilion. I don’t really know what to expect of Kazakhstan, but I thought this was pretty weak. Right next to it was another –stan, Uzbekistan, and it wasn’t so bad.

This next crazy pavilion belongs to South Korea. Its one of my favorites. Inspired by their own handwritten language, famously crafted by one of their kings, its pretty wacky in its pop up book sort of imagery. I wish I could actually read everything that was on it!

Shortly after that, I walked by a few more pavilions, including the Vietnamese one, and a combo for a couple of poor Southeast asian countries (and Iraq?). This was actually the first one I entered, and it was so horrible, I walked straight through to the other side of the building, just barely peeping into the displays in each poor country’s own part of the building before seeing just how bad it could get.

So after running away from there, I was determined to go to the North Korean pavilion. This was one of the first times that North Koreans have participated in this manner of international event, so I was pretty curious how that would actually go.

Here’s the exterior, next to Lebanon, Iran, and Mongolia (seriously, could they have gotten any closer to putting together the fabled "axis of evil"?):

While standing briefly in line, I couldn’t help but take a picture of the cameras it had monitoring the line, and I think it was one of the only pavilions in the entire site that did this. Most other pavilions had fans. North Korea had CCTV.

Anyway, here’s a few pictures of the interior:

Yes, in that first picture, it really is a plastic tower in front of a wall that has a poster of Pyongyang, the capital, that also features fountains IN THE PICTURE. No, they couldn’t spring for actual fountains next to the flimsy tower, but apparently they could afford it for the creepy little circle of babies holding another baby aloft whilst holding a bird. With brightly colored lights.

There are no pictures of it, but in the middle of the room there is a bridge you sort of have to cross, less you fall into the stream painted on the floor.

There was also plenty of merchandise on display:

A friend of mine who also went recently actually tried to buy some of these items, but apparently he wasn’t allowed to. No explanation was given. Oh, North Korea.

From there, I crossed over to the next section of the pavilion, and stopped to take a picture of this little building:

It’s a tower for China Mobile, one of the main cell phone companies in China. It was more well designed than many pavilions.

Next was a Middle Eastern section of sorts, featuring the pavilions of Qatar, The United Arab Emirates, Morocco, etc. Here’s some pictures of their exteriors:

I decided to actually enter the Moroccan one, on the basis that I have an extremely good Moroccan friend and so I thought it might be interesting. While in line, I bore witness to the main reason that the Expo will fail:

This man is holding five fake passports in his hand. At every pavilion, they offer up free stamps for those that enter to simulate a visa for their fake passports. The Chinese people really, really, really dig it. To the point where their main purpose inside the expo is to collect as many stamps as they can, and little else. All too frequently, they enter a pavilion only to get their stamp, and leave, never once taking a breather to read or watch or otherwise interact with some of the material in the pavilions. For something that is supposed to be an educational cultural experience, its clear that this is exactly what we DON’T want to have happen at such an event. Oh well, its too late for that.

There were even some places where they had separate lines to enter for those who wanted to get stamps and those who didn’t, as the number of people who didn’t want them was much, much smaller than those who did.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of the interior of the Moroccan pavilion. None of it was particularly revolutionary, but it was still a decent museum of Moroccan culture, and had a decent widescreen video to show people what life looks like nowadays in Morocco:

Here’s a smattering photos of the next several pavilions I saw, but didn’t enter, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, and others, namely the inverted pyramid of the Chinese pavilion (which looks an awful lot like my school library back home at UCSD):

From there, I was bound for the Oceania area, where I’d be able to find the Indonesian pavilion, one of my main destinations for the day.

Before I entered the Indonesian pavilion, though, I entered one called the Pacific Pavilion, outside of which I found these sleeping gentlemen:

And this strange sign (why would people be bringing flashlights, and what would it matter if they did?)

Anyway, inside, the pavilion was a mass pavilion for various island nations, ranging from the tiny island of Tonga to the rather large Papua New Guinea, and many in between. They all had small displays befitting the size of their own countries, and given the context of what kind of countries they are, it sort of took on the aura of a gigantic resort advertisement, but I suppose that couldn’t be helped.

I passed some more pavilions, and these here are pictures of all the ones around Indonesia, and finally the Indonesian pavilion itself from outside.

Its not really an exciting pavilion to look at (although I've just been told by an Indonesian friend that it is designed after the shape of a traditional house found in the northern regions of the western Indonesian island of Sumatra). However, its huge. And after a five minute wait in line, I got in, and saw that there was a ton of stuff inside. There were a lot of displays on their culture, history, geography, etc., as well as information about the modern incarnation of Indonesia and its place in the world and development and economy. I even watched a short video about that same sort of stuff.

Outside of this pavilion, I debated getting a cup of Indonesian iced coffee or some of their national beer, Bir Bitang. Ultimately settled on the coffee for its greater volume, and then sat down at a nearby table as I waited for a friend of mine who was working at that pavilion to emerge from her office for a bit, and chatted for a while.

That part isn’t so interesting to anyone reading this; however, this was the first time I took a look at any of the restaurants attached to the pavilions. Most nations had one; for people interested in tasting varied foods, the expo would be a fantastic way to try out dishes from all over the world, most of which weren’t priced too high. It would also be a fantastic way to go bar hopping, though it’d be a bit expensive; nevertheless, running from the Indonesian pavilion to Australian to Singapore and then over to the European pavilions, American ones and so on, tasting all of their national beers, would be pretty freaking fantastic. If only I had the time...

I sat there for another half hour or so, just watching people go by. Having listened to countless media reports about the overwhelming masses of people supposedly at the expo, robbing it of its joy, I was a bit surprised to see how spacious the place was. Sure, there plenty of people, but not as much as in the hottest tourist destinations of Shanghai on the weekends.

After this, I went into the Cambodian pavilion, a sad representation that fit the poor country. It was little more than a box with a poster of its national symbol, the Angkor Wat, plastered all over it.

I did this just to kill time, as another friend was soon due to show up. She is a Chinese girl who actually “volunteered” at the expo for a couple weeks just a month prior. I put volunteer in quotation marks, because all English majors in Shanghai were forced to do tours of duty at the event. There was nothing voluntary about it whatsoever. An expo volunteer looks a bit like this:

Due to this appearance, amongst Chinese, they’ve been called variously “Chinese cabbage” (apparently a reference to a cartoon character in China) and “green trees”. They’re extremely friendly and helpful to the best of their abilities, but my friend displayed for me how limited those abilities could really be. She didn’t know her way around the expo site at all, and it was up to me to find our way around. We immediately went into the New Zealand pavilion right next to the Cambodian one, which was super boring. They had an obligatory shot of their special effects company and a visual of a troll that was in Lord of the Rings, something I was really hoping they would play up. The outside of the pavilion, as you can see, looked a bit like a hobbit hill too, but no round door on the side to enter the pavilion, sadly. What wasted potential.

From there, we walked past the Thai and Australian pavilions, briefly considering waiting in line for either. These lines were indeed somewhat long, and we decided to come back later in the evening instead.

From here we walked on through the European area. What follows is a select few photos of the pavilions we passed, as well as some photos from inside a couple minor pavilions, such as the Bosnia/Herzegovina pavilion and the Czech Republic pavilion, which had really bizarre displays that are hard to communicate through my photography.

On a stage nearby there was some respectable jazz bands playing music that had attracted the largest crowd of any daytime performance I had seen so far at the expo. In fact, any direction you looked/listened, you’d hear someone dancing or singing or what have you. These guys were pretty slick, though, and definitely deserved their larger-than-average audience.

From here, we passed into the Europe-that-people-care-about i.e. North and Western Europe. My main destination in mind here was Denmark, who had imported their very own Little Mermaid statue all the way from Copenhagen just for the expo. I plan on visiting Copenhagen next summer, so some hopes that I’ll be one of the few to have my picture taken with this same statue in two different locations.

And here I am with the Mermaid.

The rest of the Pavilion was a bit uninspired, but the design of it, as you can see from this exterior shot:

Was to allow people to have a spiraling ramp around which to ride bicycles, as Denmark is widely known for its bicycle commuting culture, and has one of the highest (if not the highest) per capita bike ownership rates in the world, certainly in the Western world.

So, that was neat. Afterwards, we walked on a path through some of the big European highlights, like Spain, Germany, Poland:

And found ourselves at the Dutch pavilion, which I had heard mixed things about. Certainly, its . . . exterior, if you can call it that, was a far different design than that of many others nearby. 

It was pretty quirky, and I guess was slightly charming because of that,but man, the interior was totally lacking in any sort of unified message. High/lowlight? A display of a mannequin of National DJ Armin Van Buuren. 

That’s the best you have to offer, Holland? Oh well. You know its sad when the main part of the pavilion that people were gathered at was the part where they could take photos of the nearby British pavilion from a good angle, such as I did, with this shot:

From here, we walked on to what was supposed to be one of the main highlights, as per the suggestions of many of my friends and colleagues, the Canadian pavilion. On the way we passed by the glorious faux-papercut of the Russian pavilion, which was absolutely splendid at night:

At the Canadian pavilion, we entered a line that ended up being the second longest of the day for me, at about 10-15 minutes.

It had a pleasing exterior, and inside, as we waited, we were “Treated” to a TV short narrative by Canadian superstar Da Shan. Never heard of him? Well, if you were Chinese, you’d know him, as he’s famously one of the only white actors to have worked in the Chinese film industry who has basically perfect fluency in Mandarin. I’ve known of him for years, but thus far I’ve never actually seen him. I was shocked to see how much he looked like, well, a Prime Minister. It was only because my Chinese friend corrected me about his identity that I received this revelatory experience. I have to say I was rather disappointed by his true form. For a name that means “big mountain” in Chinese, I was hoping for someone who’d look a bit more grand. However, I suppose I can see why a rather unimposing figure from the West would do better in Chinese cinema than, say, a Brad Pitt or something.

Inside the Pavilion was a lovely bewildering display of technology and text, trying to make all sorts of wonderful claims about Canada’s eco-friendly record and so on. At the end of a long winding tunnel was two sets of stationary bicycles linked to animated screens in front of them; as you rode the bicycle, you rode through a fantastic land and airscape.

After this was an actually quite moving short “film” of sorts on a widescreen tv, which featured static images slowly overlaid with other images to enduce the feeling of movement. It was set to some really sorrowful music, and seemed to display regular life in Canada. I don’t know what message they were trying to get across, but it certainly left me with the impression that to be Canadian is a tragic fate, which I can’t imagine is right.

After this pavilion, we found ourselves quite close to the USA Pavilion, which I was somewhat conflicted about trying to enter, as I heard only terrible things about it. It was also getting late, and we had to be economical with our time. From here we went into the Brazilian pavilion, which seemed to offer no lessons except that Brazilians love football/soccer, as shown here:

I took some pictures of the American exterior, nevertheless, once we exited:

We also stopped by its restaurant attachment to get a drink, and here was what they had to offer for their menu, lots of terribly tacky stereotypical choices that I can’t help but feel are a letdown and reinforce bad thoughts about American preferences:

Afterwards, we walked back through the European pavilions, taking in their altered forms at night.  Take, for instance, the Swedish pavilion, which suddenly looked like God was about to explode out of it:

Sadly, the British pavilion wasn’t lit up that night, something I was looking forward to, with its perplexing array of fiber optics. We opted to go into the Spanish pavilion, though, and were treated to an interesting interpretive flamenco dance in coordination with film projected onto the wall behind the dancer.  Here is a picture of the dancer pretending to be dead between performances:

The feel of the interior was that of caverns, which was certainly cinematic if not necessarily educational. From there we moved onto the number one worst part of my expo experience, The Baby:

This creepy f*cker was a 20 feet high or so animatronic baby that sat still, moving its giantic faux-cherubic head around to focus on the crowd, changing its facial expressions slowly. It is surely one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

There was no real explanation for its presence, either, as far as I could see. So, what had up until that point been one of the better pavilion experiences for me garnered a huge black mark on its record, in my eyes at least.

After this, I didn’t take much more footage. I was getting a bit tired (re: in extreme pain) myself, and just wanted to take it easy. My friend and I also entered the Austrian pavilion, Philippine pavilion, and the last two of the night were the Thai and Australian pavilions.

The Thai pavilion was, in my eyes, basically a poor pavilion. However, unlike its peers, who felt lacking in every regard, the Thai pavilion managed to at least inject some fun into what they knew wasn’t going to be as big of a draw as other pavilions. They had a three chamber layout, with each room featuring a different short film, and the last one being an amateurish 3d film complete with the odd water spray and confetti effects to enhance the “immersion”. It was all pretty cheesy, but it still managed to put a stupid smile on my face, as there were not many pavilions attempting to achieve levity that day.

Also, the Chinese people seemed to totally eat up the 3d. Most of the Chinese visitors are poor people from other parts of the Country, spending a considerable portion of their accumulated wealth to visit Shanghai briefly for this experience, and I’m sure few of them got around to seeing Avatar 3-D (although that movie WAS a huge hit in China, it was seen by ultimately a small percentage, heavily leaning towards money-wealthy younger people in big cities), and perhaps this was their first ever 3-D movie experience. I don’t know. But they sure did love it, in any case, so good for them.

The Australian pavilion, on the other hand, was a colossal misfire on the inside. A nice walkway spiraling along the edge of the pavilion funneled us towards a movie theatre at the top, treating us to a slightly humorous display on a timeline of Australian history as well as some comparisons between it and China on the way; the movie inside, however, was abyssmal. Rubbish animation of three children talking about subjects that would be way over their head trying to tell us about how in Australia, anything can happen, and you can be from anywhere to do it! This fell flat to me, especially given my own background in experiences with Australian people, which, granted, is anecdotal evidence, but still leads me to believe in a high degree of discrimination in the country that would prevent most people from non-white backgrounds from succeeding to the fullest extent possible.

And then that was it. It was 10pm, and though the park is technically open a bit later than that, most of the pavilions were shut down, with staff gathered outside to say goodbye to those passing by.

My friend and I limped out of the park, our feet both feeling like they had been broken and battered by the day, and I stopped for one last shot of the park, as everyone was leaving.

It had been an interesting day.

Essentially, all pavilions were focused on a couple of ideas: being eco-friendly, and being culturally diverse. Many of the claims made by various countries as to the extent of these characteristics within their own countries are being at least partially dishonest, but I suppose that’s marketing for you, isn’t it?

A lot of Asian countries in particular also tried to play up their historical relationship with China in egregiously positive ways, that I can’t help but imagine would draw ire from their own educated populations. Nevertheless, China is a gigantic –still-basically-untapped market, and in the words of the official United States Commision-General, Jose Villarreal:

“AMBASSADOR VILLARREAL: The overwhelming majority are Chinese. I mean, there are not – I mean, it’s a fairly modest number who are non-Chinese. I mean, I think that it’s clear to everyone that this event, while global in nature, is as much an event for the Chinese as it is for anybody. I mean, someone made the point in comparing the World Expo to the Olympics, saying that the Olympics, a global event, gives the host country an opportunity – or gives visiting countries an opportunity to participate in a major event in the host country. This, in many ways, is an opportunity for other countries, for visiting countries, for participating countries, to talk about themselves with respect to the Chinese visitors. And I think this very much is the case here. Most of the visitors are Chinese and it gives us and other countries an opportunity to speak directly to them. And so I would say that the overwhelming number of visitors are Chinese.” (transcript taken from http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2010/05/141870.htm)

Its telling that at all pavilions, all information is presented in a bilingual format, English and Chinese, with very few exceptions. The only use of a country’s own language was often in the display of their own name on the Pavilion, and even that wasn’t always done. The workers inside the pavilions themselves were overwhelmingly Chinese, with only a select few countries bucking the trend, which leaned heavily towards wealthy Western nations, to no one’s surprise.

What is in a World Expo? I, like most others prior to the experience, had only faint notions of what it meant before attending. After attending, though, I found that in truth, it hasn’t changed as much from its root origins as so many would like to say. Instead, whereas the World’s Fair originally brought the jungle of industrial wealth and rewards to the masses of any country it was presented in, it now brings the jungle of our community of nations to the masses. It was never designed to be an internationally attended event first and foremost, but rather an internationally presented event. That much is still entirely true, and I hope that our Chinese fellows out there are getting something out of it.