As the time slipped away, I wondered if I was going to be able to get there. One good sign was that the crowds were shrinking as we neared the conclusion. Well, on Saturday night, I was able to find a ticket for the last day, Sunday, 10/31. So after dining with 10 Staples people from the U.S. on a very short visit to Shanghai, Saturday evening, I woke up early and went to Expo 2010 which has the interesting slogan, "Better City, Better Life." The mascot is called Haiboa who you saw in a blog months ago and here he is greeting me at the Expo...
I got on line around 8 AM for the 9 AM opening, sat down and began reading the "Einstein Biography". The lines are all well monitored with rails on each side and guards at both ends. Sure enough, five minutes later some lady comes pushing through the crowd to get to the front. I stood up and she came up to around my belly button and I told her to go back where she came from. Only when I confronted her, did all the others chime in and she was vanquished to the back of the line where she came from. (The same scene would unfortunately play out several times more when I had to police the line cutting locals.)
At 9 AM we were allowed to enter the Expo site. It was amazingly large and very spread out. Instantly, the crowds dissipated and you no longer felt squeezed in. The Expo covers hundreds of acres and has wide walkways, streets and huge buildings which make the people seem small. There are maps of the site everywhere, lots of English speaking volunteers, free filtered drinking water and shuttle buses. All very well done and efficient. So I began wandering around trying to get my bearings and decide what to go see. I headed toward the Asian section knowing I wanted to end my day in the Americas section. On my way to the Asian section, I went into a few pavilions that had no lines. I could quickly see why, they had nothing to show. Nepal - Nothing; Pakistan - Nothing; Mongolia - Nothing. It seems most countries wanted to have a presence but had either no money or no imagination. There were very nice buildings with great designs but nothing on the inside. (Is it time for a dumb blond joke?) The basic premise was walk in, move in a circle and end up at their gift shop. I saw this at least 20 times.
The first line I saw was for UAE, and it looked like a 2 hour wait so I kept moving. I got near the end of the site and saw the Japan pavilion and thought, sure let's give it a look. Well, I could have if I wanted to wait a little bit of time, like four hours. So moving to the Asian pavilion nearby, three hours. China Pavilion? not unless you had advance reservations. Heck, I didn't know I was going until 8 PM the night before, isn't that enough notice? OK, Korea should be an easy one, there's a line so why not get on it? Well, when I reached the end, the guy told me it was a four hour wait.
Saudi Arabia, not one of my favorite countries, has the world's biggest IMAX screen and has been one of the most popular with really long lines. It was only five hours when I got there, which was easy to see why when you looked at how long the line was. Now I realized why the Expo site looked so spacious, all these chuckleheads were camped in approx. ten lines for the most popular pavilions.
OK, so I went to the Israeli pavilion hoping for a little inspiration and maybe something worth seeing. I waited in their seemingly short 45 minute line. Absolute waste of time. So I wandered over toward the European and Americas sites which were on the other side. On the way, I found the Africa pavilion and had a nice lunch of spicy beef prepared with some kind of African sauces. In the pavilion there was a small set up for each country and a shopping area for each selling trinkets from the home lands. Sad but true, there were countries in there I didn't even know existed, Eritrea? Benin? The only person I know who is aware these countries exist is my daughter, Marissa, who takes some delight in being able to name all of the current countries of the world. Right now, I'm working on naming all of them in North America (and there were only three last time I checked.)
So on it went, Australia? - Awful; Poland? - low budget and crummy; France? - worthless; Luxembourg? - Waste of time; France had the typical design. A big beautiful building, with an escalator that went to the top and you walked down the ramps winding around the building to the bottom level. Unfortunately, inside there wasn't a lot of investment, nothing to really see or interact with. Some famous paintings behind glass, some robots on display.
The French pavilion was good for something. I saw this really nice looking guy nearby and took his photo...
Oops, that just a mirror and one of my sneaky photos. Here's a close up from the same spot...
The lines for UK was 3 hours, Italy was 4 hours, Russia was 4 hours and Germany was four hours so I waited on none of them. So it was over to the Americas. South America didn't fair well; Peru, Argentina, Brazil, etc. were all uninteresting. Mostly like the others, photos on the walls, not even a narrated video. In the following photo, you may think I'm taking a close up of a porcupine's butt...
But it is actually, the UK pavilion's exterior...
The UK pavilion is known as The "Seed Cathedral" is itself an object formed from 60,000-plus transparent acrylic rods containing seeds. The seeds demonstrate the concept of sustainability, the diversity of nature and the potential of life. During the daytime, each of these 7.5-meter-long rods will act like fiber optic filaments, drawing on daylight to illuminate the interior. Looks pretty cool and they auctioned off the seed pods too.
I did enjoy the Netherlands exhibit which was ingeniously designed and showed lots of great products from this country. It also offered attractive outdoor views and was fun at the same time. Here's one photo grabbed from their security camera. They aren't sure what this thing is but be on the lookout...
OK last stop, the North American pavilions. Canada was a huge disappointment; a very nice structure, some interactive things that included a bicycle that you had to pedal to make a movie play. Then a room with floor seating on little pads and video; wait it's not a video, it's a series of continuous photos scrolling with music playing, no narration, no views of Canada's beauty like British Columbia, Banff, PEI, Nova Scotia, etc. Then it's on to the next room, oh wait, we're outside and finished with this loser too.
On to the next pavilion, USA and hoping it's not an equal embarrassment. First, the best thing about the USA pavilion was I brought my passport which gets any citizen around the lines and into the pavilion without waiting. We were greeted by student ambassadors who are college students from around the US with outstanding Chinese speaking skills. The US pavilion we're told, consists of four separate presentation areas. The first is a video with the man on the street trying to learn how to say a greeting in Mandarin. To me, the people appear to be in City Hall Park in Manhattan and it's pretty entertaining and already better than any other pavilion I've been in this day. I attempted to take a video of this which is around 3 minutes long. The video had to be converted with demo software so there is an annoying banner in the middle of the video at the beginning which eventually disappears, but here goes...
Then we go into an area where are seated (another treat not found in most pavilions). This video is based on children's innocence and lack of boundaries and they share their dreams. Of course, this is interspersed with Hillary and Barack who are mostly annoying. Plus there are three women executives talking about the dreams and realities of these dreams. (It's not worth taking your time to see.)
The next room was a third video with more comfortable seating and was a nice story about a girl's dreams to turn a messy area near her home into a beautiful garden. While she has some obstacles, you can guess that she has a happy ending. I took a video of the entire show which is 8 minutes long. It was done in 5 separate panels so some areas it's hard to see but I think the quality is good enough to get the point. Very kid friendly, young girls would especially like this.
Of course, taking this video (illegally, probably) reminded me of a Seinfeld episode (what else?) where Jerry was forced to take videos inside movie theaters for illegal distribution on the streets, just like the $.70 movies I bought yesterday in Shanghai. For those of you who are Seinfeld fans, this is the episode better known for Elaine's spasmodic dancing.
Total walking for the day was nine hours, my dogs are tired!
So try to explain this sign to me. After all these years, I'm not sure what a urinal is.
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