Today, Allan and I made plans to go to the Expo for the day, but when I called him this morning, he said he felt sick and was going to lie low for the day. I decided, the hell with it, I'm just going to go by myself.
I took the subway to one of the station stops that let you off near the Expo and found myself coming out from below with a fabulous view of the China Pavilion. It really is very impressive, but they only issue 30,000 tickets a day to get in. With hundreds of thousands of people wanting to get in each day, I knew I had no shot of getting a ticket, as late as it was (around 1) so I took a picture and moved on.
Near the China Pavilion is the Theme Pavilion, which holds several exhibits. There was no line for the Urbanian Pavilion, so I headed in to see what it was about. It was actually pretty nifty inside. The theme of the pavilion was "The People are the City." It follows the stories of six families in six different cities on six different continents. The exhibit takes a winding route through the families' home lives, statistics for home-ownership and water and sewage availability in each of the cities. In one room, it was completely dark except for six screens that had a day in the life videos playing for each of the families over and over again. The videos were edited so that things they all do--brushing their teeth, eating breakfast, cleaning house--were synced up.
The exhibit was really cool, but there was one creepy bit- the very first room introduces you to the people. They have a video playing for each family that shows each member of the family for a few seconds performing an everyday task, and then it'll freeze and a heads-up display like in the Iron Man suit in the movie will pop up telling you facts about them like name, age, and profession. That's the cool part. The creepy bit is that below the TV screen, they have the whole family as Madame Toussads-style wax figures. Very life-like.
After the Urbanian Pavilion, I wandered around until the sounds of singing caught my attention. All around the Expo are stages set up in the various squares. In the Citizen's Square, there was a group of singers and dancers giving performances. I took videos of a few of the groups, but I didn't want to drain my battery too much so early in the day so I mostly just watched.
The various performances were my favorite part of the Expo. They list all the day's performances in the Daily Expo newspaper that is printed each day, which you can pick up at newsstands or at the info desks for free. I actually didn't figure that out right away, but I managed to wander upon a few exhibitions just by chance.
One of these was a performance called "Island Symphony" that took place outside of the Singapore Pavilion. Inside a fountain, an interpretive dance/drum group performed this really cool futuristic dance. The best part, though, was that the dancers would periodically use the streams of water from the fountain to spray the crowd. Very refreshing!
All of the pavilions had really long lines, but the outsides of the pavilions are, for the most part, fascinating all on their own. There was so much to see that I didn't want to spend two hours on line to see the inside of any of them! If I go back, there were a few that caught my eye that seemed fun and worth the wait, but this first time I spent the whole 8 hours I was there simply wandering up and down the streets, gawking at the pavilions. I walked so much that I managed to give myself a wicked blister on the bottom of my left foot.
Some of my favorites were the Latvian Pavilions, which has thousands of plastic and metal squares hanging on wires around its outer walls, so it ripples in the wind. I also loved the look of the Thailand and Malaysian Pavilions, both of which were crafted to look like houses or temples. But the most fun Pavilion, in my opinion anyway, was probably the Netherlands Pavilion, which was constructed like a fun house and had a big sign on top that said "Happy Street." It is definitely on my list of Pavilions to visit if I go back again. The outside of the Poland Pavilion was what looked like intricate carvings and the UK pavilion looks like a giant koosh ball. They call it the Seed Pavilion. The Danish Pavilion has the statue of the Little Mermaid on display. I got a picture of her; you can see her from the outside (which is very cool of Denmark), but only from behind. If you want to see her face, you need to wait in the queue. A nifty idea came from the German Pavilion, where they had three canvas screens that were printed to look like brick walls, where people could leave graffiti commemorating their attendance. I left my name. ^_^ Possibly the cutest pavilion comes from Macao; it looks like a giant bunny with a tail that actually waves back and forth. I bought myself a set of magnets as a souvenir.
I bought myself a water bottle at one point, but I realized around 5pm that I was quite likely dehydrated because I started to feel light-headed. There was no line for the Pacific Pavilion, so I went in there to take a break in the air conditioning. Inside the Pacific Pavilion, each of the little teeny nations in the Pacific Islands had their own pavilion with giant pictures, national relics, and mannequins wearing the national dress.
I was amused to see a typo on the information board for the Republic of Tuvalu. The date of independence written in Chinese was 9 years off, which was especially embarrassing because the correct date was in English immediately below it. Someone had tried to correct the date by scribbling out the printed mistake and writing it in correctly using blue marker.
Another highlight of the Pacific Pavilion was the mannequins for Papau New Guinea: one, they were patently white people and two, the national dress for the men involved a particularly amusing highlighting of the genitalia. There were a lot of sniggering people taking pictures of and beside it. I, of course, joined in with the completely immature giggling and picture-taking.
My favorite part of the Pavilion was the giant billboard-sized pictures on the walls, which had traditional tales from a number of the nations printed on them. I love folk tales, so I spent a good chunk of time craning my neck to read the stories. I got a few strange looks, but after I read some of them, I noticed a few people copying me. I'm a trendsetter, I am!
After a very pleasant tour of the Pacific Islands in the blissfully air-conditioned Pacific Pavilion, I waited at the Pacific Stage outside to watch the drum and panpipe group that was going to be performing. I have no idea where they were from, because they were introduced in Chinese, but I took a picture of the drum leader standing next to the announcer for contrast. Chinese men are not very tall, and the drum leader was a whole head shorter than the announcer!
Around 6 pm, the sun was starting to go down and a breeze was kicking up, so the day became much more pleasant. I wandered my way back down to the other end of the park to wait for the musical fountain at 7:30.
The musical fountain is beside the Huangpu River, which runs through the Expo area, at the end of the Celebration Square. There are loudspeakers every 50 feet or so, that play orchestral music; the fountain goes off in time to the music. It's a very impressive display, considering the water jets extend for probably 150 feet along the water front. It felt very familiar to sit and watch the show. They have shallow stadium-style steps that were crowded with people. I felt a bit like I was at a fourth of July fireworks display back home. It was another one of those moments that made me feel both at home and very far away from home at the same time.
In the middle of Celebration Square is a very large, very shallow fountain. It has a neat design, there are no sides, it is simply a very gradual slope that only gets about 4 inches deep at the center. On all sides are drain slits so that if it rains, the over flow slips underground to be recycled. It acts as a huge reflecting pool, which creates a splendid photo-op at night. However, because it has no sides, people are constantly trying to walk into it. There are security guards that walk the edge, but even when they just watched a guard shoo someone else out of the water, they still step in! What is people's fascination with walking into the water?!
The Expo is completely lit up at night, and each of the Pavilions seems to try to outdo all the others for brilliance and cool factor. After the musical fountain show, I followed the elevated pedestrian walk back toward the west end of the Expo to see all the lights. My favorite by far was the Germany Pavilion, which basically turns into a giant discotech at night.
Right before I left for the night, a family noticed me trying to take a picture of myself with the China Pavilion and offered to take my picture. Then they wanted to take a picture with me, so now I also have a picture of me with a strange teenage girl in front of the Pavilion.
I left the Expo around 9 pm, exhausted but elated. It was a really good day and I barely saw a fraction of what is there. I didn't even see the whole of the outside of the Expo! I didn't get a chance to see anything on the east end in Zone A and I also didn't get over to the other side of the river to see Zones D or E. You could spend weeks at the Expo and not see everything. I've never been to an Expo before, but I am very satisfied with my first foray. Tickets are not that expensive, only 160 yuan (about $24) so it's likely that I may take another trip some afternoon after classes are done.
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