Crazy Expo

2010 Shanghai Expo is crazy, period. Michael and I had a 7-day pass, and we made it to the Expo three times, the lines are just insanely long. So we went for pavilions that don’t have a line, USA (since we have passport and green card), New Zealand, Cambodia, China Provincial. Line to get into the German Pavilion was 5 hours, same as the Shanghai Showroom in the China Provincial Pavilion (don’t quite understand why people are willing to wait for 5 hours to see a city while being in it!), and Saudi Arabia, Japan had record breaking 9~10 hours of waiting. Michael’s classmate John did wait for 7 hours to get to see Saudi Arabia – impressive!

We heard two funny  comments about the Shanghai Expo, one is “it’s a regret if you don’t go to see the Expo, and it still is if you go”, we heard the other one when we were lining up at the entrance, an old lady wanted to cut the line, someone behind us said, “why bother cutting off the line? you are lining up to get on another line!”. Michael and I had a great time going to Ikea, eating Swedish meatball while drinking their excellent free coffee, that’s a better way to experience Sweden than in the Expo for sure! I suspect not too many countries are bringing in new technologies into the Shanghai Expo (it is a pity that we didn’t get into Japanese Pavilion since they brought 14 newest invention), since whatever innovation they show, the knock-off will probably will be on the market the next day. Although we did enjoy the magnificent music fountain with laser and fire, pretty cool. From a resource standpoint, the Expo is a big waste of money, since in the end, it is just a showcase of different countries, we were disappointed about there’s really no technologies being shared there. US pavilion was a big disappointment as well, there were three short film that we watched, first was bunch of people trying to say “Welcome to the US Pavilion” in Chinese, with product placement all over in the background. Second film was the “American Spirit”, again with speakers from Chevron and other major corporations, Clinton and Obama were both in it with some peace messages. The third one was a 4-D film about people helping each other, the last session was pure advertisement with walls of logos – GE, Pespi, Chevron, etc.

Anyway, Michael and Joe made it the record making day last Saturday (day 168), but they were exhausted probably overwhelmed by the amount of people and walking with them. The number of visitors that day exceeded 1 million, making it the most visited single day in Expo history. JT sent over some real cool pictures, they were beautiful. We met up at the Expo, the night before his flight for the US, while Michael was picking up Joe. Then we had a wonderful all-you-can-eat Japanese dinner at 海之幸 for $25 a piece – best value for Japanese food is definitely in Shanghai!

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