World Expo, Shanghai 2010

Hey, did you hear the World Expo is in Shanghai this year? ... ... ...

Before the hoopla about the Expo coming to China started a couple of years ago, I really thought Expo's were a thing of the past. I know they were a big deal back then (when they were known as World Fairs), and to be fair...expos have brought some pretty cool things to our modern day culture...think Eiffel Tower (Paris World Expo), World's First Ferris Wheel (Chicago World Expo), St. Louis Arch (Meet me in St. Louis World Expo), the gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts (San Francisco World Expo)....but I didn't know countries still got excited about the EXPO!!?!

Well, given all the hoopla and excitement and criticism about the Expo, a couple of friends and I thought it was a must-see so the 3 of us, working on a combined total of less than 10 hours of sleep, woke up on the hottest day of the summer so far in Shanghai (97 degrees Fahrenheit) and we EXPO'd.

Would we do it again? Well, we're not running to buy tickets for the next World Expo in Milan, Italy just yet---give us a few years to recover from the heat stroke and then let's talk. But overall---it was fantastic and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So, China likes to do things on a big scale. <--- understatement of the year. This expo (draw analogies to the Beijing summer olympics in 2008) was supposed to blow all other previous expos out of the water. Not having anything for comparison, I can only estimate that the amount of $$ put into the infrastructure and logistics for this expo must have been quite a pretty penny because the expo grounds are gorgeous and I think it was quite well done.

I hate how much criticism was thrown at the Expo from the beginning...well, let me take that back. I get a lot of news from Twitter links these days, and the vast majority of people I follow on Twitter are in the China-sphere. So...let me rephrase...most of the people I follow in China that are on twitter couldn't stop complaining about how much the expo cost, how the US pavilion was not coming up, and basically attacking it whenever possible. It got to the point where I felt bad for the Expo and I root for the underdog...although ironically, it's not something you could ever call the "underdog" because it's hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars in 5 zoned lots on the outskirts of Shanghai center.

I'm not sure where most of the antagonism was aimed. It could've been relocation of civilians from the expo site, it could've been environmental stuff (which btw, the theme of the expo is green technology), or it could've just been people who like to complain. Who knows? Everyone I talked to in China said that they had heard "the lines were super long" and they wouldn't go. Long lines? I hattteeeee waiting in lines but whatever. We went. We came. We saw. We conquered.....and I think we had a pretty damn good time, too. :) Here are a few photos from the 6.5 hours we spent on site.

This is some massive line that we walked by that morning. Theme of the day: PEOPLE! Sun Umbrellas! (Smart...we should've brought umbrellas)

This is one of two or three buildings that will stay up after the Expo ends in October. Perhaps this will become as recognizable as the Eiffel tower someday. But here's the thing...Shanghai has a billion super tall skyscrapers while Paris only has that one big metal thing. So competition wise.....this big red thing has got its work cut out for it. ;)

You enter from either side and take the escalators in the middle up. There's also a base building that has some of the best air conditioning in the world.

So, we entered the expo site and Justin and I made a beeline for Starbucks while everyone else made a beeline for...the Saudi Arabian pavilion probably. To be fair, it was like 8am and we had just gotten home from karaoke at 4am that morning. We needed coffee or else it would have been a horrific day. This is a pic of Mister Donut (?) where Justin started the long path to recovery from his hangover.

We thought Playboy had built its own pavilion (like Coca Cola, China Mobile, etc etc), but no, this is Macau. I don't know why. It's awesome tho!

Borat has done so much for my fondness of Kazakhstan. Even though one of my really good friends from Harvard is Kazakhstanian, I still think of Borat before I think of Kuanysh. By the by, this pavilion looks like it's covered in bacon.

This is George W's "corner of evil" at the Expo. Here we have North Korea, Iran, and Lebanon.

This is UAE. They do it big. Gold style. Everyone got a free gallon of petroleum on the way out.

Israel.

Central concourse of the Expo where you could find Starbucks, Burger King, KFC, Coca-Cola. Like a super fancy food court brought to you by AMERICA!

This is one of the other buildings that'll stay up. I was watching Steven Weathers' video on it the other day. [twitter.com/sdweathers] It looks really cool inside: multiple theaters, restaurants... should be a nice civic center for Shanghai. Either looks like a big shellfish or a big spaceship, depending on the angle.

Justin & I'll be in Thailand in less than 5 weeks!

Holland's very cool/interactive/almost Swiss Family Robinson treehouse pavilion.

This is for Pablo.

This is where Madonna adopts her kids.

This is where North Korea scored on Brasil. Just kidding. I am just still surprised NK got one in.

Vietnam's pavilion is covered with branches. Not kidding. It just screams BURN ME! That big pink squid balloon next to it with random spikes is none other than those super mentally stable Japanese. ;) Just kidding, Land of the Rising Sun....what to me is mental instability is probably just "imagination" to you.

Tracy and Justin yelled at me to come back after they saw these guys were carrying sabres and guns. I thought they were just being racist, but then I saw the guns. This is also in the "corner of evil." So....imagine this... evil Disneyland. But instead of the bad Sultan from Aladdin or Scar from Lion King or the evil queen from Snow White---we have actual al qaeda members. OH MY GOD, I'm kidding. These are not al qaeda members. I'm just auditioning to be a Fox News anchor right now and just saying whatever.

Inside the Chinese pavilion. Each province has their own section.

Ohh Haibao....so random.

Perhaps the biggest panda I have ever seen. I wanted to climb it but my friends didn't want to be kicked out of the park. Psssh....whatever

The UK pavilion. Seeds at the end of each of those spikes. Too cool!

Justin's lunch that I ate at Haiku, brought to you by Hatsune. Is it Alan Wong's Hatsune? Because if so, that's cool. He's big here in Beijing and it's good to see him expand to Shanghai or maybe it was the other direction and I'm just out of it.

PS: I ate Justin's lunch and he ate mine because neither of us could understand the waiter.

Pan-African pavilion.

Nothing to much to see on the outside but the lines here were probably the second longest in the whole expo site. INSIDE:

Americana! It was like a huge science fair!

The Great State of Texas got its own pavilion at the World Expo.

I think this was inside the Italian pavilion. They did a great job. Very cool.

Very pretty. Good job India.

******

I have pictures of many more pavilions and I might post them some other time, but overall, I think you get the point. It was pretty much the modern day, real life equivalent of around the world in 6.5 hours. Good times. :)