Lineups, Shanghai World Exhibition, and All That...

Buying our tickets

A diligent reader of this blog will have remembered that i left off the last post with Janice and i trying to buy Expo tickets from the 24 hour convenience store beside our hostel, but finding it closed. The next morning, we woke early to pick up the tickets and then take a taxi to the exhibition grounds a few minutes away. Unfortunately, when we entered the shop that morning, the woman couldn't understand a word we said. We thought that "expo" would hav been one of those words that sounds the same in every language. We finally found a magazine with the expo on the cover, but when we showed it to her, she said that they were sold out.

Waiting to line up

We figured that we'd be able to buy our tickets at the gates, so we took a taxi to the grounds. When we arrived, there were signs that pointed us to a building across from the gates. The ticket booths didn't open until 8am, another 30 minutes, but there was already a lineup that snaked its way through a roped off area in the building. There was no airconditioning and we had trouble finding the end of the line. Most of the Chinese people stepped in, over or under, the retractable belt barriers wherever they liked. When the ticket booths opened, there was a great surge forward of bodies, filling all empty spaces, and with most people jumping the line. Despite being hectic, and having a couple hundred people in front of us, the lineup only took us about 10 minutes.

Liming up

   Once we bought our tickets, we rushed across the street to wait in line at the gates. People in uniform directed us into small holding pens outside of the main buildings where the security checks and the main part of the lineup was. I don't know how many of these large security check buildings there were, but there was one on either side of the one that we waited outside of.
   Under the hot sun, we waited shoulder to shoulder with everyone else for 45 minutes. We made a few friends with some students in the lineup who asked to have their picture taken with Janice and then gave us one of their maps to the Expo grounds (we seemed to be the only people in line without one).
   We were eventually let into the building, which probably fit two thousand people -- all winding their way through retractible belt barriers to the security check at the end. It was a little cooler in here because they had installed sprinklers in the ceiling that periodically sprayed mist over everyone. And again, the lineup moved quite quickly -- within a few minutes, we had moved almost to the front of the line.

China Pavilion from afar

Inside, the grounds were huge. The side that we entered, had a lot of corporate pavillions and across the river was where all of the national pavilions were located. There was a bus that took us through an underground tunnel to the other side, where when we arrived, we quickly realized that most exhibits had lineups of more than an hour. The event sees an average of 30,000 visitors every day, and even though this was a 'world exhibition,' encapsuling cultures from all over the world, the only people that visit the event, are Chinese people. Chinese people came from around the country to see the Expo. Everyone spoke Chinese. The only people that spoke English were the people working at pavillions hosted by English-speaking countries.

Inside the Morocco Pavilion


Inside the Morocco Pavilion

Everywhere we looked, there were massive lineups of Chinese people. The organizers for the event did a fantastic job at managing crowds, but that's mostly what the event was about: managing crowds. Outside of each pavillion, people lined up in undercovered areas next to a building. Some buildings like Japan, we couldn't even get near because the lineup circled around the building several times. The grounds were divided up geographically, within Asian coutnries in one area, European in another, and then the Americas and Oceania. I think some of the African, Middle East, and India were grouped in with, or maybe beside the Asian ones. And in order for people to get from one area to the next without having to wind through buildings, or bypass the standing people barriers that trailed off from each one, they had built a pedestrian highway that was probably a good 50 meters wide and that ran the length of the grounds.

Mongolian Woodcrafts

   And of course, there was the massive China pavillion that towered over the rest of the grounds and was virtually impossible to get into. I heard from friends that we would need to wait in line to make a reservation for a time in which we could begin to wait in line. In order to qualify for this reservation, I think we would have had to fill out a passbook by collecting stamps from other pavillions. We saw in many of the less-busy pavillions that we went to, people would run in with their passbooks in hand, collect their stamp, and then leave. The pavilions of countries like: Mongolia, North Korea, Brunai, Bangaladesh -- these places had short lineups that filed in and out within a few minutes.    We did get to see some great exhibits. The first pavillion we went into was Morocco. We were walking by, looking at the building and it's massive lineup, when a man in traditional Moroccon robes made eye contact with us and waved us over. As we approached him, he lifted the velvet rope and gestured towards the entrance.
   "Can we go in?" Janice tried to ask the man, but her words were cut short when I shoved her in the back, urging her to go in with a polite smile. Either we were allowed in, or the man had made a mistake and we weren't allowed in. Either way, i figured we play the part, and hurried us in.
   After walking around the Expo grounds for about an hour, having eaten a few kebobs from Pakistan, and some samosas from Sri Lanka, we were very curious as to what could be inside these massive structures that embodied very unique architectural designs. The different countries varied in what they presented in Shanghai: in the case of Bangaladesh, they featured mostly food from their country; Brunai, they shared their econimic development plans for the near future; North Korea, a fountain and books on the glorious Kim Jong Il; Thailand, dancing and martial arts. For the most part, each country basically provided a showcase of culture unique to each country.

Outside of South Korea

Inside the palace-like building of Morocco, the first floor was dedicated to the shocasing of authentic artifacts from the country's historical culture. Within the many glass cases, we saw collections of pottery, jewleries, musical instruments, clothes, and weapons. This area all surrounded an inner courtyard with palm trees and small pools that glistened in blue. On the second floor was a Market-Bazar type exhibition, where different products and handicrafts were on display in small, shop-like spaces. Each display usually showed several kinds of textile, foods, or craft items as well as a video on how each item was made. My favorite were the spices -- not only were they rich in texture and colour, they smelled amazing.

This is as close as we got to Japan

We also visited the Canada pavillion during mid-day when it began to rain. We had heard something about Canadian being able to get preferential treatment at the doors, so with our passports in hand, we approached one of our fellow Canadians. "Are these worth anything to you?" I asked, gesturing with our Canadian identification.
"Sorry, but those are worth absolutely nothing," he said, and then opened the gate and let us into the building, where they welcomed us with Canadian flags and lapel pins.

   Inside, the first area featured a Cirque du Solei-inspired decor, with video screens broadcasting various elements of Canadian culture. The screens fit into themselves so that they could each display a single image within a large mosaic of images, or the could be blended together into a textured image of a totem pole. There was an emphahsis on the Winter Olympics and hockey in Canada, but also our cityscapes, landscapes, cuisine, and cultural events/personalities like the Gay Pride Parade and Bill Parsons. There were also small pools with projected images beneath them that people could send ripples through, and a bike tour of Canada -- where visitors could sit in an excercise bike and as they rode, a video screen took them on a coast to coast visual tour of the country.
   In the next room, There was a video presentation of various photo collages and some strange audio tracks over top. The visuals were intimate and unique, and they showed some cool scenes of Urban Canada. I think one of the images was a view of Downtown Vancouver and the North Shore as seen from Fraser Cemetary, with various people from the locale fading in and out of the panoramic.
   To finish the exhibit, there were a few paintings and photographic works on display, as well as a gift shop and restaurant where people from around the world could experience various Canadian cuisines. On the menu were things like: Bacon Cheese Burger with Fries, Fish and Chips, Waffles, and of course, Poutine.

Later in the day, when the sun started to go down, all of the buildings began to light up, which added some very cool ambiance to the scene. The sun seemed to set for hours and i wished that i had brought a tripod to steady my camera while I balanced the architectual lighting with the dusk. I ended up having to settle with a little bit of high ISO noise and some motion blur. As it turned out, with all of the lights and the low-lying smog covering the area, the sky never seemed to get fully dark.

The largest building ever?

This was about the time when a lot of people started to leave the grounds (probably to see the view along the Bundt) and when some of the lineups became manageable. One of the more interesting exhibitions that we saw in the evening was Chile.

Inside of the Chilean building, the bulk of the showcase was encapsulated in a large wooden sphere where we walked through on several different levels. The exhibit featured a theme on technology, communication and our relationships with each other. There were tunnels and corridoors with beams of light that illuminated webcam portraits. In a room, the designers had taken all of the possession of one Chillean apartment and fastened everything to the ceiling, complete with coffee cups and fashion magazines on the coffee table. The idea was to provide alternate perspectives on our living spaces. Outside of the room was some kind of mirror and portrait view, where looking outside of the window had the effect of looking into an adjacent apartment building that stretched to infinity in all directions. Also, because Chile lies on almost the exact opposite side of the planet, they built a well-like-structure into the floor of the building that was supposed to metaphorically stretch through the centre of the earth to Chile. The well was sunk into the floor less than two meters, and in the bottom was a video screen and web cam that connected the pavillion to a bakery somewhere in Chile. The idea was that people could look through the centre of the Earth to the other side and talk to people face to face. Apparently, people in Chile give a lot of "thumbs-up" gestures and form small hearts with their thumb and index fingers.
When Janice and i first planned on seeing the Expo, we were unsure of how many days we wanted to spend there. Even though we barely scratched the surface of the event, the one day was enough for us. We enjoyed seeing what a World's Fair offered in China, and the many cultures that were on display, but we only had so many weeks in China, and there's only so much that you can see in a glass box from the back of a lineup.