I Have Returned

After finishing at the Expo, I spent the morning repacking for my flight back to Beijing. Thanks to Shanghai's pathetic excuse for public transport, I missed my flight again, but at least didn't have to spend four hours in the airport (though the flight I ended up taking was delayed by an hour). Returning to Beijing, the air was thick with smog. It was at least cooler than it had been.

The rest of my time in Beijing was spent packing and saying goodbye. I made a lot of friends there and spent each lunch and dinner I had left with them, but unfortunately I still missed a lot of good friends before I left. Packing kept me busy the rest of the time, and without internet in my room, I made occasional trips to the Hope Cafe to keep in touch with home.

On the morning I left, I finally said my goodbyes to my neighbours on the 13th floor. A great bunch of people. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go to Spain, Chile, Brazil or the US soon. I shared around some Tim Tams (Australian chocolate biscuits) which were really popular.


This is just after waking everyone up at the crack of 10.


Permanent reminder of the awesome people on the 13th in the first half of 2010.

I had to get going, so I left all the things not worth taking with these guys, checked out and got my deposits back (room key and air conditioner remote, Y100 total). Then I took a cab to the airport, and nothing unusual happened from then until I got home (almost didn't get on the flight because it was overbooked, had very little time to transfer in Singapore, and spent a bit too much time getting through Customs, but none of this really mattered as I got home as planned).

Very glad to be home. The differences between China and Australia are clear - the air and ground are clean here, everything feels more open since the buildings are all shorter, and things are greener here. Adelaide could never be considered crowded by Chinese standards, and things are safer here, with pedestrians having right of way and sane road rules being followed. I saw someone crossing the road in a wheelchair on the way home from the airport, which is something you'd never see in China - ramps and smooth surfaces are uncommon, a severe impediment even without considering the motorbikes and vans speeding through what would in Australia be exclusively pedestrian areas.

In all, I had a great time in China. I spent long enough there to discover many great places and things, from the desert in Inner Mongolia, to the ice festival in Harbin, to the historical sites in Shenyang, to the street food around the south gate of my school in Beijing. I also spent long enough there to see many of China's flaws as well, many of which I've already written about, but I suppose can be vastly oversimplified and summed up as: Despite pervasive first-world technology, and rapidly improving incomes and standards of living, the culture, habits and ways of doing business in China are lagging behind. I can take some of the fastest trains in the world, but there's no way of getting a ticket without physically being at the station, and if they are sold out, I can bargain with scalpers. Many things in China are much harder than they really should be, thanks to pervasive, overcomplicated and overstaffed (and most of all, lazy) bureaucracy. All this, I suppose, makes it an interesting place to visit. There is enough variety in the amazing things you will find and people you will meet to make it worth dealing with all the "monkeys in tall hats".

So, to all the people who have been following my adventures, if you thought it was interesting - go there yourself! My only regrets from this trip are that I didn't go out and see more of China. For Westerners, it is accessible, cheap, safe (just use your common sense!) and probably as foreign a place as one can find. People all over China are friendly and welcoming, and interested to find out about where you are from and how it's different from China. There is a sense of optimism you just don't see much of in the west - whatever happens, things will improve.

I don't know when or how, but I'll definitely go back. And despite all my cynicism and frustrations while I was there this time, some of that optimism must have rubbed off on me, because I know when I go back, it will in some small way be better. But I think I'll need a new camera first.

Dummies!

I was still missing two continents, so I had to go back for a third day at the Expo. My plan was to visit the Americas of course. I could rule out the USA as it was another one of those super-popular pavilions, but of course I hoped to see everything else.

Between the subway station and the Americas is Europe, and I found some countries I'd missed. It was raining, so there were fewer people than on the previous two days. My first country of the day was Macedonia, in one of the European joint pavilions.

It was a big round hall with a honeycomb pattern on the walls, with some cells showing pictures of Macedonia. There were two levels, and on the top was a bar where you are allowed to smell (not taste) Macedonian wine.





Next was Cyprus, the home of Aphrodite. This one had some old sculptures and a big video wall with views of Cyprus. It was small but at least they did have the video wall, Egypt didn't have one of those. Next was a surprisingly interesting display from San Marino, which taught me quite a bit about the world's oldest republic. They have had the same system of government since the 13th century, with two heads of state, the ceremonial costumes of which were on display. There was also a replica of the Statue of Liberty.


The Statue of Liberty, given to San Marino as a gift from a German.


Captains Regent of San Marino.

I decided to check out Bosnia and Herzegovina next, which had its own pavilion, apparently painted by children. Model trains, surprisingly, were the focus here. There were also plenty of photos and artworks, and some communist-era movie posters. Upstairs was the surprisingly empty Bosnia and Herzegovina cafe, which offers a view overlooking the pavilion interior, and the same food as the stall out the front (they actually run down there to get it). I had a Sarajevo hot dog. The Chinese waitress had done some study for her job and told me a bit about the history of the country. Overall about half the people working at pavilions are representing their country, the rest are Chinese. In tiny pavilions like the ones in Africa, this means a few countries are only represented by a single Chinese person.







I walked towards America, and ended up in Cuba. This pavilion wasn't much to look at from the outside, but was pretty cool on the inside, with the walls painted like colourful Havana houses, and a bar selling mojitos and of course Cuban cigars.





I decided to give Venezuela a miss because of the long line, and headed to Chile. The line was just as long but after living with Chileans for so long I had to check it out. Most of the pavilion was made of wood, and was a bit arty. It started with some messages about "what is a city" on an LED display around a screen on the floor showing aerial views of cities, then continued to show interiors of some typical Chilean city homes, on the ceiling. Next we went through a giant wooden ball full of pictures of Chileans showing their hands. Then, more video walls, then it opened up into a more traditional Expo display of wood sculptures, a Chilean one-man band, and Chilean wines for sale. I already knew before coming here, Chile is known for its wine and Chilean wine is not uncommon in China.









Mexico had a cool pavilion nearby, but it was too popular for me to try going in. I didn't want to wait, so I went into the Caribbean joint pavilion. Displays here were generally better than the African ones. First was Dominica, which had a bridge and a gazebo. Local products like coffee beans and bottled water were on display.



Saint Lucia had some masks and local produce, and a bad case of the dummies.


A dummy ponders fruits and vegetables.

The Bahamas was pretty cool. The floor was a map of the Bahamas, and some big toothy animals were guarding the entrance.


Run!

Next along was Suriname, which was a bit strange. There was a cabin, a bridge, and a little cart with pictures of Barack Obama and Gandhi on it. Inside the cabin were Suriname tourism posters ("The Beating Heart of the Amazon"), fabrics and wood carvings, and a Suriname flag. Outside there were also some (presumably) native-style wood sculptures.





Grenada was a big dome showcasing alcohol and artwork. Nice though. A bit more interesting was Guyana, with its slogan "One People, One Nation, One Destiny". Inside were portraits of all their presidents since the founding of the country, a model of a town, and a Communist-style sculpture of people marching forward holding the Guyana flag. Here I learned the full name of the country is the Co-Operative Republic of Guyana. On the way out are a model of a rural village (including a bridge through trees), and pictures showing the different peoples who have immigrated to Guyana.







Barbados decided to go with interactive technology, which seemed to be working out well as it was quite popular. They had virtual surfing (looks like Wii Fit), virtual cricket which wasn't working, and a "boat ride" which seemed to just be a roughly boat-shaped box you can sit down in. They also had a bridge on the floor, a bar, and a mild dummy infestation.







Next was Belize, which had Mayan ruins. They also had flags and hats, which is the sort of thing other countries really should have been getting in on.






Yay Belize! I know the background is Barbados.

Haiti was present, and had benches to sit down on. They also painted the floor nicely and had a big strange sculpture with pictures in it. Another one where they did the best they could, I think.



Saint Kitts and Nevis was next, guarded by cannons. More dummies here, looking more festive than most. An assortment of rum was on display inside, in Caribbean-style houses, next to the scenic railway, which was a box made to look like a tram car with screens in it showing parts of the Federation.





My next stop was Trinidad and Tobago. This one had an economic focus, with the ambiguously optimistic slogan "We Are Next". They had more dummies, but managed to contain most of them behind glass.



Next was Jamaica, man. Unsurprisingly this one focused on tourism and reggae. They also managed to keep Usain Bolt standing still all day.



Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had a lot of rum, and dummies. They tried to disguise the dummies as birds, but I saw through it.





Antigua and Barbuda had yet more dummies, and the base of a windmill, along with some plastic fruit. I think after this I'd seen all the Caribbean countries - and if not, I didn't want to see any more of those dummies anyway. I walked outside, past Canada, the USA, and Brazil (all the big names), and ended up going into Peru.

Peru was pretty cool, with some paintings and sculptures on display, Peruvian hairstyles, and stories about historical links between Peru and China. At the end of the tour was the Peruvian Kitchen, serving meals, and a lot of handicrafts for sale.







On leaving Peru I was immediately distracted by a country which was probably trying to sneak up on the Americas - Libya. Of course I went in, and of course Gaddafi was there. The Great Libyan Arab Socialist People's Jamahiriya managed to put together a decent pavilion, with a Libyan street, some plastic sand dunes and a lot of talk about their Great Man-Made River Project.







I ventured deeper into Africa from there, into Nigeria. I still had plenty of time to go back to the Americas from here. They had a rainforest in their pavilion, some local handicrafts, and talk about their wealth of natural resources. Nigeria is another one of those countries with a portrait of its president at the door.





Leaving here, I ended up in Europe, and got to see what the pavilions here looked like in the daylight.


Leichtenstein somehow had a huge pavilion.



I went back to the Americas, skipping the USA Diner, and decided to check out Colombia. This was another well-done multimedia pavilion, with a movie, then a part of the Amazon with bags of coffee and a waterfall, and finally similar touchscreen tables to the ones in Kazakhstan. The volunteers here were very friendly and I had a chat with one from Bogota.



I then decided to go into the joint pavilion for Central and South America, which didn't have as many countries as some of the others, but the subpavilions were nicer. First stop here was Ecuador, with a Galapagos tortoise and a band playing, with CDs for sale.



Guatemala had some ancient ruins, and apparently had some Chinese help with the decoration because on the front of their Aztec (or Inca or Mayan, I really don't know) pyramid there was a big LED display showing animated shapes.





Nicaragua was decorated with rock walls, but just had pictures and hammock chairs on display. El Salvador was a bit better, they had a volcano.



Honduras had a hut and some trees, and a red building with presumably native motifs. Panama had a canal, and not much else. It was a pretty strange pavilion, but I suppose it reflects what the country has to offer (if there was anything more interesting in Panama, they would have built a model of it instead).



Costa Rica had coffee, of course, but at least complemented it with a sphere with a projector in it. There was a coffee bar, selling fresh coffee and beans to take home. I had an iced coffee, and it was pretty good.



Uruguay also focused on its major export, although it may be less well-known internationally. Uruguay has more than 12 million cows (4 cows per person), and so its major products are all derived from cow. Beef, milk and leather are what the Uruguayan economy and pavilion revolve around, and all this is emphasized in facts printed on the underside of a dome cow sculpted for the Expo (a permanent gift to the people of Shanghai). No meat or milk on sale though - but there was an Uruguayan restaurant somewhere in the Expo.







The other guay, Paraguay, wasn't as interesting and just had pictures of buildings. Bolivia, on the other hand, put together a pretty good display of huts, Bolivian life, and what I think was the Bolivian philosophy of life. There were wooden masks and other carved handicrafts, all handmade in Bolivia.







I then went across to the Dominican Republic, my last remaining destination in the building, which was more like the Caribbean pavilions with colonial buildings, costumes and of course dummies. There were birds as well, which was a nice touch.





It was dinnertime by the time I left Central and South America, and after all the talk of beef in Uruguay I had to try some. It took some time to find, as it was closer to Europe than America (and everyone I asked directed me back to the pavilion) but I eventually found it. There was a sign inviting me to "come up stairs and taste the best beef of the world", which was an offer I couldn't refuse. I was seated in the classy restaurant and given the menu - all steaks, all high (even for the Expo) prices. I ordered the set meal, soup, followed by steak, followed by dessert. Even this simple style of serving food is something rare in China - they are used to having all the food on the table at once. So I had my soup, and then got started on my medium-rare steak (anything less than well done would disgust most Chinese people usually, which is probably why the restaurant was so quiet).



This steak was one of the best I have ever had. The meat was tender and juicy, perfectly cooked. The Uruguayan chefs clearly know what they are doing, which I suppose is to be expected since they eat 53kg of it on average a year (thanks for that, dome cow!). I savoured the steak and watched one of the chefs serve up a birthday cake for a waitress (yet another thing not usually done in China - not the cake, treating staff well). A great experience, worth the Y195 just for the steak (that's a bit less than AU$40). Better meat, better life indeed.

I went out and had a look around the part of Europe I found myself in, and noticed I hadn't been to Georgia yet. Another small country in a joint pavilion. It was full of history and motifs, with a bit of the eerie Kyrgyzstan feel, but done better. The lights were shaped like bunches of grapes, and artifacts and wine were on display.





The Expo is on both sides of the river. The Pudong (east side) area had pavilions for countries, and the Puxi (west side) area had pavilions for companies and industries. I went across the river on a ferry, and met some girls going to visit the Japanese industry pavilion. Having missed the Japan pavilion, I went along.


Lupu bridge, built for the Expo, lights up at night.


Lights on the roof.

This pavilion was good, and made me regret not having the time to go to the Japan pavilion. Lining up, there were some lights visible on the roof (which was a metal grid) which made a nice pattern. Photography wasn't allowed inside, but wouldn't have been worth it anyway - almost all presentations in here were video-based. It was all done very nicely and artfully, the sort of thing the Japanese are good at. Four Japanese companies each contributed a section - one was Kikkoman, another was Japan Post. If photography was allowed, I might have remembered the others (so it was a worthwhile investment by them I guess). Each focused on how they made life better, Japan Post by connecting people through the things they send, Kikkoman by making things taste good. At the end were some interactive displays and technology demonstrations - perhaps surprisingly from Japan, nothing I hadn't seen before (though we didn't stay long).

Next I went over to the Chinese Aviation pavilion, and being the handsome guy I am the girls followed me. The pavilion looks like a whale, or a giant peanut. I think most of it was closed by the time we got there, and only a small part was being shown - a model of a jet engine, some models of Chinese aircraft, and some flight simulators (they wouldn't let any more people line up that late though). Of course the gift shop was still open, selling the same sort of fighter jet models available all through China (high-quality, large metal ones).





We then tried going into the 2049 pavilion, which was supposed to show what life might be like in that year. It looked like what I think the Egypt pavilion should have looked like, and it was closed. So we went into a pavilion which offered what was probably a pretty similar experience, the automotive pavilion. We were made to wait in a hall for a bit, while being shown a video of, unsurprisingly, how far the industry has come in China in the last 30 years, showing the first highway in China, bridges, and how bad the traffic is now. After this we went into a cinema in which the seats were the type that can tilt and swing around - an adventure was to begin. The movie we were shown was a story of the future, shoehorning standard Chinese tropes (love story, reconciliation with estranged father) into an utopian version of the techno-porn parts of Minority Report. It was entertaining, but didn't really say anything important, and the moving seats were gimmicky as they usually are (tilting and panning with the camera is a nice effect but I doubt it was worth the cost). After the movie, the screen came down to reveal a stage, and one of the future cars from the movie drove onstage (it was one of the concept cars also on display at the China pavilion). Some dancers dressed as Tron characters came out and started prancing around as one of them drove the car around the stage. It was all entertaining but very, very strange, and the girls agreed, didn't really show the Chinese auto industry can come up with anything better than a big, slow electric toy. Not to say they can't, of course, but they didn't show us anything else. Next was a hall about how bad greenhouse emissions are and how electric cars will solve that, another copy of the same concept car, and of course a shop full of toys (and cushions).



Everything was closed by now, including the subway of course (who wants to go anywhere at 11pm?), so we parted ways and I took a taxi all the way back. I was to fly back to Beijing the next day, so this was the end of my Expo experience. Overall it was a lot of fun, I learned a lot about a lot of countries I don't usually hear anything about. I missed a lot and would probably not have seen everything even with a whole week there, but I don't feel I wasted time going to the pavilions I did. Each one was interesting in a different way, from the Panama Canal to the giant baby, and the way I did it was how I'd reccommend anyone else to - just walk around and go into whatever looks interesting and has a short line.


They said I could share this photo, but only if I said they are much more beautiful in person.