World Expo Shanghai

Stephen and I went to the Shanghai World Expo.  Military and police were everywhere. The queue structures were the size of football fields and there was dozens of lines in lots of buildings at many entrances. A truly amazing feat of people movement.

The China pavilion dominated the site. The sense of foreboding was heightened by the fact that day trippers could not get in, you needed a special lottery ticked booked in advance and then be prepared spending your whole day just in the rigmarole of getting through that one pavilion. Under the main China pavilion were Ekka like halls for the Chinese provinces with separate structures still under the main China roofline for Macao and Hong Kong. The inpenetrableness of the China Pavilion to visitors like us left me feeling that China's openness was presented with a rising power's assertiveness that may not be particularly friendly. To be fair though, perhaps just the pure demand for their pavilion made the logistics of letting us in impossible. 

Oman was our first pavilion. We queued for half an hour. The smell of frankincense was highlight.

We caught the bus to the UK pavilion. The site was just too huge to walk around.

UK Pavilion looked amazing.

Inside it was surreal.

Sense of euphoria when you finally could see the Kew Gardens seeds lit by the tubes from outside within the temple.

Coming out of the main chamber.

Looking across to the Dutch pavilion.

Although bitsy, we spent lots of time at the Dutch pavilion. They gave all their ground space over as shaded green space for sitting with sheep. Best possible idea for future cities in my view along lines of Queenslaner highrise. Congratulations Netherlands.

Quality of queue experience struck me. Lots were like Russia where you want back and forth like an abattoir. More artistically evolved countries provided queue experiences that met the needs of people with the best queues at Canada and Spain. Locals all brought umbrellas to keep them out of the sun.

Inside the Russian kids has sketched ideas for future cities, and then you went up into the kids pictures full scale. An impressive effort, but just didn't seem to me to meet western ideas of beauty. It was not helped by the fact that their choice of plants for utopia looked like the dune weed species list for the Gold Coast. Despite globalisation, still seems to me to be a big gap between Countries in their ability to put on this scale of public spectacle. Or maybe its not skill but taste that's behind the differences, and the Russians think our western stuff is hideous and primitive? Anyway the contrast struck me.

Canada pavilion was clad in timber and growing grassland.

The interior rooms were by Cirque du Soliel. You had to peddle to see the cartoon of greencity urban forms evolving with the subdued mime artsy vibe.

TVs played Canadian cartoons and some were mirrors for self portraits.

This guy, dressed as a Mountie, smiled 1000s of time in a row. Looked exhausting.

Huge auditorium for Expo concerts looked like it was from outerspace.

Another middle eastern country. Queue's were shorter so we saw a few of these.

 I was impressed with Indonesia. Obviously not the money of the bigger places, but of the countries that put touristware artifacts on boxes, Indonesia was the best.

Spain was one of the best pavilions we saw. The outside was clad in woven panels.

We entered the first hall in darkness. Both walls and roof were TVs with sound coming up through the floor. Out of the darkness down one wall a flamingo dancer gradually arose and flourished us through. As we exited the running of the bulls joined the crowd as images and pounding waves of sound. Spectacular.

The next hall had massive panels of TVs up or along walls, and soaring overhead. The images of crowds blended with the people in the hall so you forgot which was whichr. Then the image would drop crowds and you'd suddenly feel you were on your own in front of a signature Spanish landmark before plunging again into crowded streetscapes or family events. All set to Foley soundtrack, no full music or discernible language, but immersion in sounds. Truly first class.

The entrance to the final hall had images of babies up on a hanging screen that you had to walk through. People paused to watch the cute babies, and were reluctant to walk through to upset the show. The images turned on people's "that's a cute baby" brainwaves, so that when they arrived at the enormous animated baby (Isobel Coixet but seems plagiarist of our Ron Mueck?) in the next hall the effect was breathtaking. They blew bubbles from the ceiling and the baby followed the bubbles giggling and smiling with the whole audience firmly in toe (tow).

The Australian pavilion was a bit disappointing. Looked great from the outside. Most of entry areas seemed to be queueing space, which I would have liked earlier in the day when sunny, but we were there late and went through so fast the displays just didn't work.  Featured cutesy stuff upside down on the ceiling (down under groan).

After corralling the crowds, and waiting too long in enclosed corridors (old people had to be evacuated out side doors), we were finally let into a main Theatre space. The steps down were shaped wrong so that people tripped up and stumbled down every session. Real young Aussies then spoke Chinese getting people to fill rows and squeeze up close (then disappeared and had no further part). There were no seats, just lean on bars that just did not quite fit someone of my size (nor any other size judging by the fidgeting and walkouts). The show was statues of kids rising and falling while TV screens went up and down all going round in circles in Chinese. This was the only pavilion where English speakers were not catered for.

Our final pavilion was Korea. We literally were the last two people in the line prior to closing for the evening. They had new TV technology like 3D screens and these TVs where you could see yourself and the TV added enhanced reality (choose your own adventure style). Still klunky but still pretty kool potential for a new wave of full immersion reality interactive TV.

The feature though for Korea I felt was the hospitality of their hostesses. They're dressed impeccably and smile and wave you through each section starting right at the end of the line. Here they are at the exit still bowing as people are leaving the pavilion. We are the last lot to go and they are all still fully on the job at midnight.

Here is one end of the Expo axis near our Metro station on the way home. These axis structures were huge elevated walkways to take crowds through the site. Not only could they change colour, but they could display kids and horses in animated sequences. We were at Expo all day and through to midnight but only saw a few pavillions in some areas on the Pudong side of the river. All day we were warned the queing time for Germany was up to 7 hours and dropped back to 5 hours in the evening before the queue closed.