Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A China Holiday: Day Three: The Shanghai World Expo

On Friday, the whole conference group attended the Shanghai World Expo. Oh my: it was--you guessed it--crowded. This is the line to get in. There were about 800,000 people there the day we visited (and no, that's not a joke!).
The China Pavilion. Mostly I don't remember which buildings belonged to which countries (and I'm too lazy to look it up for you!). We didn't go into any of them (except for China) because the waits were 2, 3, 4, or even 6 hours, just to get inside one of these pavilions. No thanks!

Chinese Scottish bagpipers!
Creepy.
Silly.


How cool is this?
It's Spain's building, which looked like a lovely free-form basket.

The United Kingdom Pavilion, my very favorite by far...it doesn't even look real! At the end of each of those rods (which move in the breeze) is a seed from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew's Millennial Seed Bank. It was designed by Thomas Heatherwick.



Russia, I think.
The Little Mermaid, all the way from Copenhagen (and special water from Copenhagen brought in for her, too).



Haibao, the Expo mascot.
I feel you, brother...I wanted to lie down, too.
A family of Haibaos.

A lot of people were in the China Pavilion along with us. Now I can say I've been to a World Expo--but I'm not sure I need to go again!

1 comment:

JuJu said...

800,000 people. I seriously can't focus after reading that.

gingstan

That 50 Cent is so GINGSTAN.