Shanghaied

The reason I was interested in going to the world expo in Shanghai was because Picasso made a breakthrough in his painting after visiting the Paris Expo. The idea that an encounter with different cultures may somehow give me new directions in my work was just very enticing.

I had originally planned to go from Hong Kong to an area in China that I had never been before but I went back to Shanghai which I had been before with my parents because of the expo. The Shanghai that I visited, about seven years ago was in transition. and there was still a lot of visibly old buildings and dirt on the streets, right next to some of the world's tallest buildings. I remember seeing fish hanging out to dry on electrical poles. But the Shanghai I visited this time was a gleaming new city. It was very clean and it was only wandering around on the last day of my four days in Shanghai that I found some of the old streets that I remember. These old streets and buildings had been hidden behind hoarding that they use for hiding building sites. I did go to a place with 'old style' houses called Xingtiandi, but is was more or less an international shopping street with a little Shanghai accent. To me, Shanghai is what I would call 'Chinese Communist Capitalist'. Except for the language and a Chinese slant in aesthetics, Shanghai is not very different from any rich capitalist city.

I was fortunate to be offered lodging by a friend, Nan Yoong, in a new block of high end service apartments. Although Nan Yoong was not there, his parents were there as they had just moved into the service apartment themselves. So it was nice to have a few meals with them and I was well looked after there. My stay in Shanghai is definitely the most luxurious of my entire trip! So I thank the Rin family for their hospitality.

My first encounter at the expo was not only disappointing, it was embarrassing. The first pavilion I visited was the Singapore pavilion. The design of the pavilion is arguably interesting, but it did not grab me. The theme for the whole expo is Better City, Better Living and each pavilion had a chance to either show how they factually are creating better living or how they imagine a better city with better living. I think the theme for the Singapore pavilion was musical harmony, on the ground floor they had trampolines that made a sound when you jumped up and down. And there were 4 trampolines together, I guess so that a group like the Tang quartet could jump a tune. I certainly heard no music coming from the display. Then there was a video of 'Singaporean Life' starring JJ Lin as a lost traveler, Tanya Chua as an ethnic dancer and Stefanie Sun as a biologists. And they kind of look happy some times and kind of look stressed sometimes. I have no idea what part of the Singaporean reality this represents? And I do not see how this inspires any idea of better living. It came across as meaningless fluff. Walking from one level to another, there are facts about population and other statistics on the wall, accompanied by what appeared to be contour maps. But what the contour maps mean is a mystery, and I am science trained. And they did have a garden on the rooftop with an Orchid specially created for the expo. It is a nice gesture, but riiigggghhhhtttt…… As I left the theatre I heard a Chinese visitor telling his girlfriend that in an expo full of video presentations, the Singaporean one was the worst. And as I was leaving the pavilion, an elderly Chinese lady said that the pavilion's planning was stupid, anyone could have done it. Aaarrggghhh. As a country we are very livable. Great public transport. We are a world leader in water recycling techniques. We are known as the Garden city. We have arguably the world's greatest airport and port. How did we come across as such a lame country?!!?!?!?! Our presentations were simply incoherent and uninspiring. Sigh.

Several of the pavilions like Australia and New Zealand were predictable but quite well done. They had pictures of happy citizens and they put facts about their country across well. Some of the smaller countries like San Marino and Lichtenstein had to share pavilions in a Europe Pavilion. The presentations were usually straight forward with some history and tourist attractions. Most people used some sort of video/computer presentation. They may not have been great, but the presentations were honest. I found out some interesting information for my visit to Lithuania.

It got interesting at the Danish Pavilion. They let artists imagine what it would be like to have a perfect city, where people have more time to spend with one another and are closer to nature. There were beautiful video and photographic presentations that inspires the viewer to be drawn into a better, more holistic lifestyle. They had the guts to bring the little mermaid statue to expo and I think it is amazing for anyone to see the Danish icon in Shanghai. The Finnish pavilion, like some white alien spaceship, was highlighting design. The entire interior of the Finnish pavilion was an interesting space and design, like walking into a different dimension.

The best pavilion by a country was definitely by the United Kingdom. It looks like a giant pin cushion from the outside, but it is actually thousands of plastic rods which direct light into a room which they call the seed cathedral. And at the end of each rod are seeds from different plants. This seed cathedral highlights the work of Britain in creating a massive seed bank of plants from all over the world. The entire presentation is at once elegant, awe inspiring and brings across the core idea of the importance of nature immediately. During the day, the seeds are illuminated by light from outside, at night light is transmitted out of the rods to glow in the night. The pin cushion structure was presented in a park that resembled a present being unwrapped and this structure was a present from the UK to China. Now, this was inspiring.

There were other pavilions besides the country pavilions. Some were themed pavilions like the pavilion of the future where urban planning was discussed. It really got me thankful that there are people out there who are thinking about how to plan a city for water, electricity, mobility and more. There are also several pavilions for big Chinese companies to present themselves. The only one I went to was Chinese telecoms and they were hard selling communications technology. Right now we can transmit sound and images, but they challenge the viewer to think of transmitting all the 5 senses. Imagine visiting a friend virtually in a different country, but with all 5 senses. Seems a power akin to being a demigod, the ability to have omnipresence.

The whole expo kind of left me drained. Except for the pavilions that inspired the audience to thin out of the box, it seems impossible to truly understand much about a country from a few video presentations and iconic props (Our Singaporean one was a Durian Star with a badly drawn merlion on its chest!) I realized that my Overland trip was akin to going to the world expo, but I get a better chance of understanding things better by meeting locals as I travel.

I went and visited the Bund on my last day in Shanghai and visited their shopping street. I just could not shake off a sense of irony between how red China fought for its independence and now, through economic development, there has been an economic invasion by the capitalists.