For once,
The Bund has been upstaged. This year, the most spectacular sight on the
Huangpu River is the sprawling site of the Shanghai World Expo 2010.
This huge global trade fair runs from May 1 to October 31, but the city has been
building toward it for more than a decade.
And as the day draws near, preparations have reached fever pitch, with old buildings
(including many in historic Yangpu district) being torn down, new
buildings (including the
World Financial Center and
The Cool Docks complex) sprouting up overnight, a dozen or so lines
added to the
Metro network, and nearly every street and sidewalk (particularly those
in the foreigner-friendly
French Concession) given a good polish. This is
Shanghai's chance to shine, after playing second fiddle to Beijing during
the 2008 Olympics, and China's chance to show the world where she's heading.
The latest in a long line of World Fairs (stretching all the way back to London's
Crystal Palace in 1851), this is also by far the biggest Expo to date. Excitement
is palpable, with more than 190 countries and 48 international organizations participating,
and as many as 70 million visitors expected from all the regions of China
as well as abroad. All of them will be heading to the Expo site,
a 5.28 square kilometer zone in the shadow of the
Lupu Bridge, built from scratch to showcase sustainable urban development
in accordance with the Expo's "Better City, Better Life" theme.
Appropriately, this is the very first Expo to be hosted by a developing country.
The site itself is made up of a series of 100 pavilions—purpose-built
exhibition spaces representing many of the participating nations and organizations,
many of them truly extraordinary in design—which will play host to a variety
of events and exhibitions. Pride of place, though, goes to the
China Pavilion, an inverted, imperial-red pyramid known as the Oriental
Crown, built at an estimated cost of 1.5 billion RMB.
Yet not one of the pavilions can compete in the visibility stakes with
Haibao, the omnipresent Expo mascot and "Treasure of the Sea," who waves
cheerfully from every freshly-scrubbed street corner, waiting to greet each and
every one of his 70 million fans.