Nanjing Road
Looking towards Pudong. You can go up on the raised part blocking the view, but it was packed. Seen it all before anyway.
There were so many people roaming around, in fact, I saw an interesting phenomenon I don't think I've seen anywhere else. Usually on Chinese roads the law of the jungle applies and as a pedestrian you always have to be alert to traffic, and it helps to travel in groups. However, when hundreds of people pour onto the street right in front of oncoming traffic, the tables turn. Most intersections along Nanjing Road were blocked by the mass of people. This wasn't enough to hold my interest for long though, so I went back after about an hour of wandering.
The next day, interesting things started to happen. I was to leave with Prof. Li early in the morning, for a breakfast at the Sheraton in Pudong. The whole thing was to promote the ACT (Australian Capital Territory, where our capital is) as a hub of innovation. So there were a number of delegates from Chinese and Australian businesses, academics (many of whom I knew!), and Australian government representatives, including the Chief Minister of the ACT. After everyone had gathered at the Sheraton, we took a bus to the Expo, and with VIP passes went straight into the back door of the Australia pavilion, which contains a function room for these sorts of things. All very fancy. People much more important than me talked all morning about innovative projects happening in Canberra, including the bionic vision research I hope to get involved in later on. After this lunch was served, and I had my first meat pies since leaving Australia.
After lunch, we got a VIP tour of the public side of the pavilion. It's all done pretty well, lots of sculpted scenes of Australian history, famous Australians, and ending with a video light and sound show about Australian city life to tie it all in with the theme of the Expo, "Better City, Better Life". After this we were all let loose on the Expo grounds and, unfortunately, stripped of our VIP passes. Most of the others left, but I stayed for the rest of the day.
Of course, the first thing to do was to compare our pavilion with New Zealand. Outside the Australian pavilion I actually had a Chinese girl think I was working there and ask me where New Zealand was, so we went together. We had to line up for a while, but they had the Maori out to entertain us. Once we finally got in, we went through some rainforesty tunnels, and some typical New Zealand home scenes, before emerging into a path through some grass. There were some odd glass fountains, representing glaciers I think, and some Maori art on display. Australia was better.
Everything is sort-of roughly organised by global regions, so Australia and New Zealand are right next to all the South-East Asian countries. Thailand was the best looking of these, so we went there next. We had to line up a lot longer for it, but it was worth it. There were some dancers in traditional dress out the front while we were in the line (this should be the theme of the expo), and once we finally got in, we were treated to some excellent presentations - scenes of Thai life with a fountain from the ceiling starting when the monsoon started in the video, a 3D movie with more water from the ceiling, and a video presentation about Thai history with some surprise animatronics. Video presentations here aren't as dull as they sound, most of these involve multiple screens around the walls of a room showing the same scene surrounding you.
My new friend was going to Europe, but I wanted to hang around SE Asia a bit more, so we parted ways. The lines turned me off Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Singapore pavilion looked like a flaky keg, so I decided to go for Brunei since there wasn't a line. Pavilions seem to fall into two broad categories, putting visitors through an experience like Australia or Thailand, or just having stuff sitting around on display. Brunei was the second type. The stuff was mostly photos from Brunei, their stamps, and they had a stall serving Brunei food. But it had air conditioning and there wasn't a line so it was pretty good.
I then made my way to Europe which was just across the road. The Portugal pavilion was big and brown and lumpy, big enough to suggest something really good might be in there, but brown and lumpy enough to make one think "what could they possibly say about Portugal?". I didn't find out the answer to that question as the line was too long. I went to the Czech Republic instead, which was interesting looking and had a swirly pipe for the queue to go through.
There was a bit in the pavilion about Czech architecture and technology, but the emphasis was clearly modern art, resulting in a very odd experience. Eerie grey shapes and Escheresque scenes were suspended in white boxes in the ceiling. There was a wall made of Czech cartoons, which was pretty cool.
After that I had a look around the shared pavilions. Each region has a couple of pavilions which house multiple countries, presumably for countries which can't afford their own separate building. So, this means countries like Armenia, Moldova, Albania and Azerbaijan. The latter sounded interesting and had a short line so I went in to check it out. There wasn't much to see, it was decorated like what I imagine is typical Azerbaijani architecture, and there were a number of lit-up posters explaining aspects of Azerbaijan industry. Apparently Azerbaijan is a leader in nanotechnology, among other things.
I kept exploring after leaving Azerbaijan. Norway has a cool pavilion which is angular and made of wood. Ireland's pavilion is covered in grass so it looks like a hobbit hole. I kept walking until I reached a road, which was blocked off for a Disneyland-style parade, with floats and dancers. I watched it for a bit, until I noticed a whole bunch of people had left the Turkey line to watch it as well. So I took advantage of the situation.
The first part of the Turkey pavilion focused on ancient history and archaeology, and emphasized ancient ties between Turkey and China. There were replicas of ancient statues and structures, and miniatures of famous ancient cities and buildings in Turkey, such as the Constantinople Hippodrome, which I think was where the Romans raced hippos. It continued to some more current Turkish arts and crafts, and finished with a spectacular 360-degree theatre showing aerial views of Turkey.
Lots of interesting things like this.
I kept walking through Europe looking at all the cool pavilions, but not going in because these were all the popular countries. Latvia (they had one of those skydiving simulator fan things), Finland, Belgium and Serbia. Germany was one of the most popular pavilions, with a two to three hour long queue. I ended up going into Spain, despite the line, because I'd been living with a Spaniard and was curious.
Inside it started with a series of caves, which was cool, then they started projecting video on the wall so that horses ran through the cave, and then a dancer came out. After she was done, we went through to a room with more screens showing videos made of images from modern Spanish history, particularly ads from the 1930s and 40s, houses, and modernisation. After this was done we all went through to the last section, a giant baby.
Nummy nums!
So in all, Spain was pretty cool but a bit weird. I kept walking around, and ended up hungry in Holland. The Dutch pavilion is very strange, but the bottom area is open and they sell food there.
Designed by the famous Dutch architect, Willy Wonka.
This was definitely the cutest pavilion of the day. The bottom section has a floor which looks like grass, and is full of plastic sheep you can drag around and use as seats. There was also a statue of Miffy, which I saw in a video playing soccer against a Smurf (being a statue, she was goalie).
I had my croquette meal and went up. Unfortunately my camera batteries gave up at this point so I don't have any photos from inside, which is a shame because it was open and curvy and nice. It's done as a street, spiraling up from the ground, with houses on either side containing displays. The displays themselves were the usual examples of culture and innovation, but the design of the pavilion itself was the main attraction.
I went to find some fresh batteries, and once I did, I found myself across from the Africa joint pavilion. Most (sub-Saharan) African countries are represented in here. It's a great pavilion to visit - I didn't have to line up at all when I went, and you can walk around inside and see lots of different countries you don't usually hear much about. First was Mozambique (the Land of the Smiles), with small shacks labelled "school" and "hospital" (in Chinese and Portugese), containing photos from the real things in Mozambique. The Zambezi river was painted on the floor. A small display, like most of the ones in the building, but I suppose they did what they could to try and attract tourism and foreign help (almost every country present was explicitly trying to attract foreign investment). Next was Tanzania, they were popular because they had a giraffe.
Malawi was the next one along, which appeared to have prepared their tourism branding (a logo and a slogan, "the warm heart of Africa", with big lit-up signs), but not much else. There were photos of the capital Lilongwe, and a lot of talk to attract investors. I had a bit of a look, then moved on to Zimbabwe. This one had more of a history, tourism and archaeology focus (although I'm not sure how practical tourism in Zimbabwe is at the moment). There were replicas of the ancient stone structres which gave Zimbabwe its name - the name of the country literally means "house of stone". There were smaller sculptures and other artifacts, and of course, a portrait of Robert Mugabe. You can infer quite a bit about a country based on whether or not they have a portrait of their leader in their Expo pavilion.
Zambia, Namibia and Lesotho were more small displays of cultural artifacts. If I write about them all in detail this entry will be much too long. Near these subpavilions was the centrepiece of the building, a sculpture of African faces, including one animated projection which morphed between old and young faces, all smiling. Ghana and Kenya were also nearby, and worth a mention is Kenya's poster about the birthplace of Barack Obama's father.
Next was the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, which was a bit larger than the others and had a camel. Senegal had a big lion's head out the front. Togo was a bit different, showing the current state of its cities, and its plans for future development (which mainly consisted of photos of trains from other places, with TOGO poorly photoshopped onto them). Niger was nice and colourful, and focused on the history of slavery in the region. Sierra Leone offered itself to investors, selling its ability to process food. Liberia and Cote D'Ivoire had more of the same. Cape Verde had an attractive display and probably had a bit more money to spend on it than the others. It went through its history as a "City of watery and mail to Empire".
These same dummies were everywhere, I think all the Africans got together and made a big order.
Equatorial Guinea didn't have much, but next to it was the Organization of African Unity, which had a nice wire globe with a solid Africa on it. It had pictures showing the history of the OAU since it was founded in 1963. Chad was next to it, with the best-dressed animal in the building. Inside were some huts.
Gabon was another slightly larger one, with a wooden tunnel showing parts of Gabon life and culture. It was all very friendly, unlike the next one, the Republic of the Sudan. This was made to look like a fortress, and apart from more dummies in Sudanese dress, there was a poster about their current peace agreement (the closest any pavilion in the Expo came to admitting violence in their country) and a very official-looking list of instructions for foreign investment in Sudan, which looked like it was printed out from a government website.
I think this one was in the Team America movie.
The missing link between humans and apes was holding a "Welcome to Rwanda" sign next door. I'd come back to it, so I kept going to Eritrea, which had a camel, traditional leather furniture, and giant heads showing different Eritrean ethnic groups. Djibouti was next, with a hut next to a bridge and, of course, mmore dummies. Next was another interesting country, Somalia. This showed the country's position between desert and ocean, more traditional clothes and furniture, and some posters about Somali culture and their historic connection with China (which may shed some light on who paid for it).
Rare examples of the Somali Sea Camel.
Burundi had a hut, Comoros was a bit more interesting with a volcano and a dodo. I went to the shared souvenir shop, the African Bazaar, and got an I Love Somalia mug, then left the building. I think I missed some countries, I didn't go back to Rwanda I think, but I'd seen enough huts. I spent over an hour poking around Africa, definitely better than spending the same time lining up for something else.
As I left, I saw more African countries which decided to get their own buildings - Angola, South Africa, and Egypt, among others. I went straight into Angola because it has a really cool flag. Not much to see inside though, there was a gazelle. Next I went into Algeria which was much nicer. It was made as a recreation of a casbah, with some nicer dummies dressed as Algerian women. Upstairs was a big video wall and floor, and after that, some artwork and a collection of Algerian sand (better than it sounds).
I went into Egypt next, which I expected to be good because I'd expect they have a bit more money floating around their tourism industry than Algeria, but on the other hand, everyone knows what there is to see in Egypt. What they had was a museum of ancient Egyptian artifacts. I'm sure they were interesting from an archaeological point of view, but most other countries did a lot more to make their pavilion interesting.
Next pavilion along was South Africa, which was a huge box with a picture of Nelson Mandela on the side. Of course there was a giant soccer ball and a couple of foosball tables at the entrance for the World Cup, and flags of all the countries competing, but not much more than that. The rest is local handicrafts (including a wire lion) and posters about South African industry. It all looks pretty good but isn't as exciting as maybe it could be.
It was quite late, and pavilions were starting to close. Crowds seemed to have been shrinking since about 6 so I took the chance to try some of the more popular pavilions. Russia was nearby, but I couldn't see how to get in. So I asked a guard, and we had an interesting conversation (in Chinese):
"How do I get in here?"
"Do you have a VIP pass? Are you Russian?" "No."
"Hm... I'll let you through the green channel."
And so I was escorted by security to the front of the line. I think it was because I look like I could be Russian, I was still dressed smartly from the meeting in the morning, and the pavilion was about to close. The pavilion, however, didn't seem to have much to do with Russia. There were some Picasso-esque sculptures, then a big fairytale garden. You go up a ramp around the garden, then through a tree in the middle which supports the ceiling. The ceiling is the moon, with Sputnik and a Soyuz hanging from it, these being the only things I recognized as Russian. Maybe I'm not aware enough of Russian culture, or maybe the whole thing actually has nothing to do with anything. It was nice though.
Next was the UK pavilion, which was very popular and interesting-looking (high correlation there). There was a short, fast-moving line so I went straight in. The pavilion itself takes the form of a giant hairy ball surrounded by wrapping paper. I thought the hairy ball looked a bit like a flattened version of the hats the guards at Windsor Castle wear, which is very British. Going inside, under the wrapping paper, was a set of lights projecting a pattern of water drops onto the floor, which was cool. Once inside, the true nature of the pavilion was revealed - each hair of the ball was glass, with a different type of seed embedded in each one, and so the big hairy ball was supposed to represent a big hairy seed, I suppose. It was pretty visually impressive. Then on the way out of the ball, on the other side of the wrapping paper, all sorts of plants were growing out of it. There was a message in there about green cities and harmony with nature. Right at the end, I found the top side of the wrapping paper was covered in carpet, so one can lie down on it for a rest, as many others were doing.
Inside the big hairy ball. Hard to get a good photo of it, and I don't have any good ones of the outside at night.
Plants under the wrapping paper.
I was very tired, so decided to leave after lying down for a bit on the wrapping paper. This was a lot more difficult than it should have been, since the Shanghai subway closes pretty early. I didn't make it very far and had to take a taxi the rest of the way, nearly an hour. In all though, a very good day.
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