Shanghai Expo 2010 (Part 2)

US Pavilion

On the first day, my family visited the US pavilion. We were greeted by a snaking queue in front of the pavilion, with lots of metal railings set up. Looked like a maze or something, so much was the amount. We walked in, taking in the pavilion in our eyes. My first impression was that it was made up of two or more buildings. After about 20mins of queuing, we reached the entrance. We were greeted by a friendly american student who spoke Chinese better than most people in my class. She told us she was part of an ambassador project, where University students from all over the US get chosen to come to Shanghai expo as a guide.

The first attraction was a short film, in which US citizens learn to speak simple Chinese phrases, like 你好 and 欢迎你的来到. After which we were led to another room, this time a longer film where President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke in English to us about core american values, with Chinese subtitles. They then proceeded to say some simple Chinese Phrases and the film ends.

The third attraction is the very popular 4D movie, The Garden. The movie tells of a little girl trying to plant flowers at an abandoned corner in the urban jungle. Her determination inspires her neighbours and they ended up all helping her construct the garden. After the 8 mins long movie, we were led into another room, this time with all the companies' advertisements and stuff. Thus ends the trip into the US Pavilion.

Shanghai Expo 2010

For the last 2 weeks, I have been in various places in China for holiday. I have been to Shanghai for 2 days to see the expo. The first thing that hit me when my family went to the entrance, there was the longest queue(s) I have ever seen. One for entering the entrance, one for baggage check (entrance into the Expo). And what's more, the ticketing counter is across the road! For each of the mornings, my family had to cross the road, but tickets and cross the road again. After the troublesome trip, we finally ended up at the tail of the loooonng queue to enter the entrance. After about 20 mins of queuing up, we have finally reached the next queue to the baggage check and ultimately into the Expo itself.

Long wait. Finally, baggage checked, and all done. We're in! The first thing that I saw was an overhead bridge. That was the Expo Axis, a bridge in the middle of the whole Expo. It crosses from one end of the compound, all the way across the River Yangtze. We set off on our adventure in the Expo. It didn't turn out very well. Reasons? I feel ashamed to say that what ruined our trip was the people. Most in the Expo were Chinese, as in people born in China and holding the China passport and all that. They acted as if they did not receive any education (which I'm quite sure is exactly the case as they all looked like they're from the poorer parts of China).

First place we went was across the river. There, in area C, were the most popular pavilions, which naturally implied that those pavilions were more interesting. It didn't exactly work out, our plan of visiting the most interesting pavilions on the first day. Not at all. In fact, we didn't even get to visit most of the pavilions on my list of "Most Interesting and Worth Visiting Pavilions". It was all because of long queues. There was a surprising amount of people, considering that we went on weekdays. The (rumored to be)best pavilion, the Saudi-Arabia pavilion, the queue was so long the sign at the tail of the queue said that anyone would have to take 8 hours to reach the pavilion entrance if queuing.

The rest of the pavilions were not any better. Some required 4 hours of queuing, and the shortest among the most worth visiting pavilions had us wait 20 mins because we went during the time when everyone was eating. On the first day, we went to the US pavilion, UK pavilion, and some others.

Continued in next post..