EXPOsed

The Expo is in Shanghai this year. For those of you who don't know what the Expo is, it's what many call the "World's Fair." If you don't know what that is, well, it's a big exhibition every two years or so where countries and companies show off or "exchange" their advances in culture and technology.

Shanghai got it this year, and won't shut up about it. Like the Olympics, EXPO 201o is a big deal for the Chinese. Unlike the Olympics, nobody else in the world cares about it. I was once asked if foreigners would come to visit Shanghai to visit it, to which I responded "no," unless of course they were expatriates who were living in the vicinity. Which I was, so I went. Twice.

What you do at Expo is simple-- You pay 150 Yuan to wait in line for an hour to enter the site, walk to a pavilion that you want to visit, then you wait in another line for over 2 hot, miserable hours to enter. The really popular ones, such as Germany or Japan, can take up to 4 or 5 hours to get into (we managed them in about 4). From what I heard Saudi Arabia was the longest wait at nearly 8, thought some had clocked 5 or 6. The Chinese Pavilion was open only to special reservations, as were Taiwan and Hong Kong (yes they had their own). Smaller ones like Oman, Israel and Argentina only took a matter of minutes to get into, but also risked sucking, like Slovenia. We had purchased little Expo-passports that you could get stamped at each place, so we attempted two long lines each day, and killed the remaining time at the smaller, quicker pavilions.

Queuing is a western concept which was only recently forced on the Chinese, and believe me they hate it. Despite the country's Buddhist legacy, people here are very impatient. Jumping queues is very common, therefore you have to fight to maintain your position in any line at the train station or dino-park. Line rules were well-enforced at Expo (for once), but people would still push past you for the slightest advantage and fill in any available space. As a social experiment my friends and I fought to maintain about 1.5 meters of difang (space) in front of us while people piled up behind.

Most of pavilions were interesting, though never worth the wait. While the event's theme was "better city, better life," most, like Spain's, were just expensive exhibits of their culture and history presented on massive video screens. Though Spain's did have a freaky, giant animatronic baby that greeted you at the end. I was disappointed (but unsurprised) that Germany's "Balancity" actually followed the prompt and presented a polished but less exciting array of environmentally-friendly and sustainable technology, ending with a giant orb which reacted to the audience's energy. Others, like Israel, emphasized (or pandered perhaps) their positive efforts with China to make the world a better place. The entire exhibit in Japan's Pokemon-shaped building was based around one of the ugliest white birds you have ever seen. Apparently this Ibis went extinct in Japan so they found more in China and imported them. As presented in crystal clear video by Canon. At the end a little Chinese boy then sang a song about it while masked people road around the stage on futuristic Honda scooter-cars. Yu Yun liked it.


But the best pavilion by far was North Korea. Upon entering you were greeted by the rainbows and fountains of a cheap, socialist dream world. It was the kind of thing so over-the-top and fake that you immediately felt like you were livestock in an abattoir being comforted before you reached the rotating knives. There was very little English, but above the TV monitors showing harmonious scenes of opera, soccer, and factory work, was the simple phrase: "paradise of people."


Next to North Korea was Iran, but my Chinese friends didn't want to go in. Apparently the Third World just didn't hold the same absurdist wonder for them.

Leb Wohl.