Maybe you've heard: Shanghai is having a World Expo this year, from May through October. It is omnipresent in this town. It is everywhere. The Expo's mascot, Haibao, a short, blue, Gumby-like creature, is on every street corner and in many other locales. The Expo itself claimed a large section of riverfront property, largely on the Pudong side but also on the Puxi side as well. It is an exhibition of the countries of the world, and many, often with the Chinese government's help, have built large and temporary pavilions in the Expo space.
China Eastern Airlines was kind enough to give me a free ticket with my flight to Shanghai, so Max and I decided to head over and check it out. Well, tried to. Our path to the Expo was unfortunately rather circuitous. We had just moved to the Pudong side, to a Motel 168 that had amped up the fun factor, inserting fruit in plastic underneath the lobby floor.
From there, we thought it would be a quick subway ride to the Expo. We headed down into the Expo and were approached by a friendly seeming Expo volunteer, who spoke some English. She told us to take the bus, available "right upstairs." Ok! We headed upstairs and...no bus, nor a sign of a bus stop. We asked the official Expo booth and they pointed across the street and down about 200m to a normal bus stop. Max and I crossed the street and headed down. We waited at the bus stop for about 15 minutes, all the while trying to deduce which buses would head there. We made up elaborate stories about numbering schemes and snowflakes and took our best guess. We hopped on, I told the conductor where we were headed, and she laughed in my face. No effort to get us to pay nor any help for these non-Mandarin speaking travelers. After a couple of stops, and especially when the bus went straight instead of turning, we hopped off. A free ride to the middle of nowhere!
However, we thought we were close, so we decided to hoof it. Bad idea. The maps we'd been using, especially Lonely Planet, do an awful job at translating scale into an understandable distance. So, more than hour later, we arrived at an Expo gate. Except tickets weren't sold at this gate (we needed one more) and so we went down to the next gate, a mere kilometer away. Finally, we were there.
The empty ticket gates seemed promising - maybe it wouldn't be so crowded inside! Nope. Plenty of people inside, they had all just arrived hours earlier. In the 90 degree sunshine, many had smartly brought umbrellas to serve as parasols while they were in queue for the pavilions.
Max and I began to stroll around, and ended up in the Middle East and Central Asia section.
There was definitely Turkmenistan and Qatar, and perhaps the UAE as well. The pavilions were richly, sometimes whimsically, designed creations. The best rationale I've heard for the Expo is that many folks, especially domestic Chinese tourists, won't make it to many of these countries and so this is the way to bring it to them. Taking this to heart, Max and I headed to two-thirds of the axis of evil.
The North Korean pavilion was the saddest of the lot. I lone mock stone monument surrounded by fake blue plastic water was the main attraction inside. It didn't even seem to make a whole-hearted attempt to propagandize.
The Iranian pavilion was better done. Replete with Persian architecture, the building itself was a sight to behold. Inside, a large overhead skylight rained down light on the two stories. Upstairs, a full on rug market, with actual buying and selling of actual rugs taking place. Downstairs, live musical performances were taking place. There was also a neat sign that spoke of the eight ways in which the building represented what Iran was all about.
As our final learning experience, we headed to the Kazakhstan pavilion. What looked to be a short line took forever, as only 30 guests were let in at a time. After we got in, we saw why. We were moved slowly through four stations as a single group. The first was a highly interactive and technologically driven investigation into Kazakhstan, full of touchscreen monitors and Wii-like video games. The second was a 180 degree, 3D movie experience telling the story of Kazakhstan. The third was an actual winter setting, with real snow.
And the fourth had a live musical performance. Wow, they certainly knew how to entertain!
On our way out, we walked by a number of pavilions. South Korea, with an intricate complex, and Saudi Arabia, which had built an oasis on a platform, were the standouts.
With that, and a short bus ride, ferry ride, and taxi ride, we were off to dinner!
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