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A sneak peek at Britain's efforts for the Shanghai Expo
2009. 4 December
by Malcolm Moore The Shanghai 2010 World Expo, the modern incarnation of the World’s Fair, will run from May to October, and the city is already hyperventilating at the prospect and covering every available public space
(blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
Unless you are (a) Shanghainese or (b) you know someone who is, you will not have heard about the most important event in China’s calendar next year.
(Fun fact: Liverpool, which is twinned with Shanghai and which will contribute a pavilion to the event, also has a few Haibao statues. However, they had to make them in the UK, the Chinese ones failed health and safety, predictably.)
As a journalist working in Shanghai, I am, ahem, constantly encouraged by the local authorities to “get more Expo stories into the paper”. Shanghai is, after all, spending $45 billion on the Expo and it wants the world to know.
The only problem is, no one cares. Seriously, the world outside Shanghai no longer pays any attention to Expos. Did you know that the 2005 Expo was held in Aichi? Do you care that the 2015 incarnation will happen in Milan?
And there’s no reason for the public to care. This is a business event. There’s no impressive opening ceremony to televise, there are no feats of human achievement to applaud. There are just hundreds of boxy pavilions and the chance for some jolly corporate hospitality.
Companies and governments care about the Expo, which they hope will give them a chance to butter up the Chinese, but the rest of us aren’t bothered.
Sadly, this doesn’t go down well with the Chinese, who are still pestering everyone from Barack Obama and David Beckham to show up. Gordon Brown would probably make the trip, but he may be a bit busy come May to put in an appearance.
Anyway, the good news is that the British effort for the Expo is actually quite decent, especially compared to the dour efforts sitting opposite it from the French and Germans. Our pavilion is a giant cube that bristles with fibre-optic rods. I got a sneak preview yesterday, and while it looks like an immense effort to build, especially since each of the rods has to be tested for waterproofing by hand, it is a quietly impressive design.
Unlike most of the pavilions nearby, there’s actually not going to be anything inside the British effort. It’s just for show. The rods emerge into an inside chamber and each one is tipped with a seed, encased in the plastic. It’s a nod to how green London is (something you really only appreciate when you end up living in a place like Shanghai) and to the Millenium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens.
Most of the attractions will be outside the pavilion, where the London Symphony Orchestra will play and performers will gambol around. Let’s just hope that double-decker bus doesn’t show up from the Olympics’ closing ceremony with its team of cringeworthy bowler-hatted dancers.
Meanwhile, here’s a piece in this week’s Economist about the last Expo that China held, a vain attempt in 1910 by the country’s out-of-touch Manchu leaders to prove that they were capable of modernising the country.
Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk