Better City, Better Life, Better World

Note: You can see my pictures of A LOT of pavilions by going to my Facebook Photo Album

Ok, so I tacked on the "Better World," part, but in my opinion it sounds so much classier than the Shanghai World Expo's "Better City, Better Life," slogan. Although I have to say that they really marshaled global support for this theme of theirs. The expo, from what I understood, revolved around the idea that people are all eventually going to gravitate to big cities, so we need to prepare a plan for dealing with large concentrations of people in urban areas. To that effect, there was an entire zone of the World Expo dedicated to "The Urban Something-or-other." I didn't go, but I'm sure it was relatively interesting... ish.

Side note: I'm currently eating Pocky and actually cannot seem to stop. Like I'm willing myself to stop and it's not working. Bad sign.

After entering the north gate of the Expo (set up with tons of rails to organize a nonexistent line of people), we realized that we had entered the wrong side. See, the Expo is split by the Huangpu River, with the boring stuff (read: major donors' pavilions) on the north side and the fun stuff (read: all the actual countries' pavilions) on the south side. We realized this as we were looking at this giant map, at which point one of the workers very excitedly came up to us and asked us if we needed any help. He seemed so happy to have a reason to speak English that we didn't have the heart to say we were ok. So he enthusiastically pointed out very many places of relevance to us.... you could almost see his brain ticking off each spoken location as a successful use of English.

So. Crossing the river. The Expo apparently provides three methods to cross: boat, bus, and train, although I never saw this magical train. We tried the boat first but the line was "long." Little did we know that the bus line was going to be even longer. But we stuck it out, got even more accustomed to the pushy culture, and finally made it to the south side. And would you happen to know which country was closest to our bus stop? North Korea.

Which is how Marissa went to Pyongyang before Eliot. Sorry I couldn't wait for you Binh. Other than this giant wall photo of the capital, however, North Korea's pavilion was unsurprisingly sparse. I was surprised they were even there at all.

What followed was a rushed tour of as many other countries as we could realistically see. Since we were on the Asia side, I tried for Japan, South Korea, India, the U.A.E. and China of course, but I was categorically denied by the multiple hour waits at each of these. Japan was the worst with a 3+ hour wait. I mean, it was probably the coolest and all, but 3 hours? I did make it to Vietnam, though, which ended up being one of the prettiest pavilions. What was weird was when my mom decided to take up a fascination with Korean cooking at the South Korea pavilion, given they had huge brochures with recipes for the more famous dishes... guys, I can't. It's too much. And anyway, they had pictures of famous celebrities like Obama, Rain, Michael Jackson, and Hugh Jackman along with quotes of their favorite dishes. Like I said, much.

Anyway, from there we decided to get in the epic line for the USA before it was too late. On our way, I had my first celebrity Westerner experience, with two Chinese men stopping me and eventually communicating that they each wanted to take a picture with me, so of course I obliged. I admit, I only saw a handful of non-Chinese tourists the whole day, most of them at the USA pavilion. And bless the organizers' hearts, there was a Papa Johns right outside the USA area. That Hawaiian pizza was the most delicious thing I'd had in a week.

Now on the subject of the USA pavilion... when we finally got through, there was a giant lobby where about 100 people at a time were let in to watch a 10 minute clip of "average Americans being approached on the street" and trained to say "Hello, welcome to the American Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo." The really cute part was that each time the Americans tried on the screen, the mass of Chinese tourists in the audience altogether encouraged them, finishing their failed attempts, and nearly cheering when they got it right. Next stop was an auditorium with long benches, where we watched an 8 minute clip on "Americans' core values," which ended up being about 4 kids and 3 CEOs taking about how kids' ideas for the future are awesome. Which is so legit, but it was just a bit of false advertising... and long... and slightly repetitive. The pre-highlight was Sec. Clinton addressing the crowd, followed, of course, by President Obama's message to the world. I swear to Big G, when his face came on the screen, this reverent hush fell over the crowd. Heads that were previously bent down over phones came up, babies quieted, and everyone had their full attention on the giant face in front of them. It was 很有意思 hen youyisi (very interesting). The final stop was yet another video, this one without dialogue. It was just a creative, expressive film about this girl living in the city who dreams of turning the dreary, trashed corner of her block into a garden. After many setbacks, including uninterested neighbors, teen vandals, and rain (THEY ACTUALLY TURNED ON THE SPRINKLERS AND GOT ME WET), her neighborhood finally came together and made a garden out of many recycled things... like a bathtub. After that, it was a walk through a sponsor-filled hallway and on to buy American merchandise. Apparently America's approach was to emphasize the theme of the World Expo, and not so much the culture of America. But I guess the world gets that all the time anyway.

After that we took a whirlwind tour of some other pavilions, including some African countries that I didn't even know existed, and some I didn't know were allowed to be at the Expo (Sudan, Somalia). As I saw the names of all of these countries gathered in one place, I found it amazing that so many countries could come together and occupy such a small space. Israel was only a hundred yards from Palestine; India and Pakistan were about the same distance. I don't know if the Congo and the Republic of Congo still harbor animosity towards each other, but they were just down hallways from each other, as were Ethiopia and Eritrea. And then of course there are countries that antagonize a whole demographic, like Iran and North Korea. I was just amazed by the ramifications of a World Expo, in which the countries of the world, or at least their representatives, gather together and work in peace for half a year. It's just very thought-provoking, seeing the world in one day.

Final thought: Even though the Expo itself was running smoothly, the subtle undercurrents of a less idyllic reality were present inside a few of the pavilions we visited. The image that stuck with me the most at the end of the day was one that I came across in the Afghanistan pavilion among the rugs that they were selling. I still don't know how I feel about it.