Shanghai slowly warming up to the Expo
The Spring is late this year in Shanghai. With temperatures well below the average for March, the thousands of Haibaos, the blue mascots shaped like 人 (person) that stand on every intersection of the city, must be feeling the chill.
Starting May 1, the Expo is just over a month away now, but Shanghai continues to live its busy life, and the locals are slow to warm up to the idea.
Despite breathy reports from advertising agents indicating that Chinese people are excited about the Expo, it is hard to find anyone seriously for or against it in Shanghai.
The mood is of Shanghainese aloofness, and even the controversy about the impact on housing prices (this year's hot social issue) has failed to catch on. Online, popular Shanghai-based forums like KDS still don't have any Expo threads among the hot topics.
Surely nobody is missing the ugly politicization that preceded the 2008 Olympics, nor the lamentable scenes seen during the torch run. But sometimes bad press is better than no press, and it is hard to avoid the feeling that a bit more of controversy might help to kick start the fever.
On the international scene, the promotion efforts have come under criticism lately. While some individual pavilions are doing a great job of promoting themselves (e.g. the U.K. and Germany) see some websites here), other countries like the U.S.A. are facing serious financial and planning problems and have not done much advertising.
More crucially, the work done by the general organizers of the Expo seems too exclusively focused on China. They have invaded the country with an army of Haibaos, but the international side of the campaign is weak, as illustrated by this ineffective billboard that appeared on New York's Times Square. Even the official website of the Expo displays an amateurish visual design seemingly disconnected from the futuristic pavilions that it advertises.
An event unique in history
In spite of all the above, the Expo's spring is finally starting. With the end of the NPC meetings last weekend, the focus of the Chinese media is turning to the Expo, and the city newspapers are publishing long special sections dedicated to the event.
Slowly, news and pictures of the construction are starting to trickle onto the internet, and the security measures that started this week in the Shanghai metro are making everyone aware of what is coming.
It may be coming a bit late, but it is coming sure, and there are good reasons to pay close attention. All seems to indicate that the Shanghai World Fair will be a significant event, comparable to the classic World Fairs that shaped our ideas of the Western metropolis.
The raw numbers of the Expo speak for themselves. It is expected to attract between 70 and 80 million visitors, which would make it the highest attendance of any single event in history, by a large margin. While television audiences of a sport show can dwarf this quantity, in terms of real human contact the number of people from different cultures that are going to get together is unprecedented, and it has the potential to change the relations of China with the World.
At a time when misunderstandings between cultures are rife, such events that promote communication and participation rather than passive spectator animosity can have a very real impact.
For most Chinese it is extremely difficult to travel abroad, especially outside the South East Asian region. In spite of the number of foreigners concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai, for many inhabitants of smaller cities foreigners are still a novelty, and their cultures are greatly misunderstood. With the 3 day entrance passes set at relatively affordable prices, these people will flow into Shanghai en masse.
For many of them, the possibility of meeting all the different "foreign friends" classified by continent and country will be as exciting an any of the buildings in the Expo. Foreign visitors may be surprised when people take pictures of them as if they were walking pavilions.
As with all events involving large construction projects, detractors point at the purely commercial interests of the participants, who see the Expo as a country branding event. While this is certainly true, the fact that all the countries will have direct access to the most promising tourist market of the world will also be a motivation for them to show their best attractions.
Although less hyped in the media, the Expo 2010 will be a more friendly event than its Beijing 2008 forerunner, both for foreign and for the Chinese visitors. The security challenge is important and the inconvenience of five months of high security measures will be felt in Shanghai, but the relatively relaxed international atmosphere will make things easier for all. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already announced it will adopt an easy visa policy during the Expo period, so we will probably avoid the difficult conditions that made 2008 a tough year for many foreigners wishing to work or just visit China.
This year's event also makes much more sense than many of the Expos organized in the last decades, almost exclusively celebrated by developed countries. This is the first World Fair in a long time where the organizing country has something to prove, and it will make all its efforts to make it a special occasion. Like Paris or Chicago in the 19th century, China is living the enthusiasm of an economic revolution. We already saw two years ago what the Chinese are able to produce for the grand occasions, and the EXPO will be a better chance for many people to enjoy that directly.
This will be the last large-scale international event marking the ascent of China, and together with the 2008 Olympics it will serve as a landmark in history. It is possible that in a few years, many in the West will not remember what the 2010 Expo was about, but for the people of China, this year might mark the beginning of a new era.
