Shanghai - Part 2

Welcome back to my week in Shanghai, China. Today, I learned an important lesson. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever...go to Disneyland in China. More about that later. I started the day bright and early, with an awesome breakfast of dim sum. It was outstanding!

I only wish these were my pictures...

What a really great way to kick-off the day. With the 12 hour time-difference between Shanghai and Boston, it was actually dinner! I'm a big fan of Dim Sum - no matter what meal it happens to be.

After meetings this morning, I did manage to carve out a couple of hours to go the big Expo 2010. This is an international event - very similar to the old World's Fair. What follows will be a photo-intensive look at my visit. Just remember, I don't take the beautiful pictures in my family. I leave that to my wife and cousin. I'm just trying to document my trips, that's all...

To begin with, the Expo is H-U-G-E. I can't really find the right words to describe it, and making the font any bigger isn't going to do it. To put some context around this, the Expo is set-up on over 5 square miles of land. According to the official website, there were 398, 600 visitors to the Expo today. Yeah, you read that right, almost 400,000. I think I ran into every single one of them ; ) The peak, so far, was last Saturday, with over 1/2 a million people.

Expo 2010 is divided into several sections, with the most popular part being pavilions that are created by various countries around the world. The most spectacular, of course, is the Chinese Pavilion:

Those little dots at the base are people...

I hope this gives you some idea of the size. This particular building will remain, even after the Expo closes in October. The other pavilions aren't as monstrous, but are still large in their own right. Some additional examples:

Brazil - with a soccer game playing on the big screen

Algeria and Angola

Luxembourg - seriously, what were they thinking?

Germany - built like a tank

Oh, Canada!

Even Moldova gets a pavilion?!?!

Thailand - this was pretty sweet

God Bless America!

A few of these pavilions were really, really unique. Leave it to the Europeans to come up with some of them:

Spain. Check out a video of this pavilion, to see more of the materials:

UK - basically a giant pin cushion

Switzerland - with chair lifts on top!

Inside each pavilion is a set of displays, exhibits and films about each country. The lines for each of these pavilions is....LONG. I tried to get into the USA Pavilion, and it took over 1 hour:

A video of me and 400 of my closest Chinese friends

Here's something I learned. The Chinese do not have the same cultural mores that we do, when it comes to lines. The definition of "personal space" just doesn't exist in China. In addition, there doesn't seem to be a second-thought given to shoving, jumping ahead, cutting in line, etc. My wife noticed the same thing when we visited China last year. It's like a nation of America teen-agers that only care about themselves. I'm not trying to demean the Chinese - they just don't operate under the same code as I'm used to. For this reason, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever...go to Disneyland in China ; )

Needless to say, after the experience at the USA pavilion, I didn't have time for much else. In the middle of the Expo, is something called the Expo Axis. It housed restaurants and stores:

This goes on for about 1 mile...hard to see how far that goes...

Inside the Axis

Ahhh...at least I can find a Diet Coke ; )

The mascot for Expo 2010 is this cute little guy - his name is "Haibao":

Yeah, I picked up an action figure...are you suprised?

He even made an appearance today. to the delight of one young woman:

Overall, it was amazing to see everything, even if I had to rush through it. I ended up walking miles and miles by the end of the day, which is a good thing. I know that it's still no fun going to see things like this by yourself ; )