Writer’s Block

When it Rains at the Expo

Thu, 2 Sep 2010 06:46:25 +0800

Shanghai was suppose to get a typhoon Wednesday, but apparently it missed the city. I don’t care what the weather reports said, for about an hour there was some insane rain at the Expo. It was raining so hard you couldn’t see out of pavilion windows. The Expo looked like a ghost town, with many visitors waiting out the rain inside pavilions and restaurants. The streets were empty.

Rain might be one the main “themes” of this Expo. There has been way too much of it.

But four months into the Expo and Shanghai receiving a solid helping of rain, the Expo site can get dicey with bad weather. There have been several instances where drains overflow from the amount of rain water. The overhangs of public benches in many areas are actually designed in such a way that when it rains, the water completely soaks the bench. Instead of staying dry under a covered area, the benches become desolate places. No one wants to sit on wet seats.

The biggest problem: puddles. We’re not just talking about a mine field of water accumulation on the ground throughout the Expo. I am talking about puddles that stretch 30 - 40 meters long, cutting off whole areas. Anytime it rains, there are at least a dozen spaces around the Expo where massive ponds form.

I give you the Great American Lake (so named because it forms in Americas Square every time it rains hard):
(Photo: Above, the Great American Lake).

Should one be heading to the Expo any time soon, an umbrella isn’t the only thing one should have with them. You should probably think about strapping on a pair of rain boots too.

Going Through the Expo Garbage

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:04:16 +0800

The more time I spend inside the Expo Center covering events, the stranger the revelations become. The Expo Center’s sole goal, other than housing all the Chinese media, is to host official ceremonies for country’s national Expo days — not necessarily the country’s actual national day.

It’s all very formal, but it’s really for the Chinese media. Anyone living in Shanghai that has spotted a broadcast of someone singing or dancing in front of a massive red backdrop — I usually see them playing on subway or bus televisions — they’re watching a taping of the Expo Center opening ceremony.

I’ve noticed at recent ceremonies a group of cleaning and security personnel hovering over the large garbage disposal bins after the conclusion of the ceremony (note the photograph above). Everyone that attends the ceremony typically gets a gift bag. Apparently, the gift bag — which can include some information on the country celebrating its national day, maybe a stuffed animal or pin, usually the country’s flag, possibly some music and/or DVDs promoting tourism —that gets left behind on people’s seats is thrown out.

What the garbage and security personnel do is pick through the remaining swag items, removing any pins or flags. It’s their keepsake from the Expo. Of course, pins have become all the rage for Expo staff members, but the small, plastic flags are something I’ve only seen Expo Center employees collecting.

According to several of the officers on duty at the Expo Center, they’ve collected more than 100 flags since the Expo began May 1. That is a lot of “made in China” flags. That is a lot of days working inside the Expo Center. One officer I spoke with said he has a large bag he’s keeping them in. He doesn’t know what he is going to do with them all.

Suggestions: After the Expo, mail each flag to the minister that visited for the country’s national day, ask them to autograph it and see how many flags come back.

Hosing Down the Expo Streets

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:19:47 +0800

I see a truck blasting streams of water in every direction, and my first inclination on a hot summer day is to run toward it. The temperatures are in the high 30s Celsius, it’s humid, and a truck spraying water sounds like a good way to cool off. Chinese attendees inside the Expo see a truck blasting water and they run to get out of the way, and cover their eyes and mouth. They want nothing to do with the water coming out of that truck.

I am not suggesting anything suspicious is inside the Zoomlion trucks driving around the Expo grounds, hosing down the streets in the name of sanitation. My only complaint is the hours the trucks decide to head into action. They could just as easily do it in the morning or evening, when crowds are lower, and so are the temperatures. The problem with spraying asphalt midday in baking hot temperatures is the streets get even hotter. It’s like tossing water on hot rocks inside the sauna.

It would be easier just to have trucks driving around the Expo, spraying attendees with myst. It would also make my job more enjoyable.
(Photo: Above, a Zoomlion sanitation truck sprays water on the streets inside the Expo Park).

Leftovers Around the Expo

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:28:18 +0800

Pavilions are always handing out free gifts for visitors. Nearly every time an announcement is made of another millionth visitor in a pavilion, the lucky individual usually ends up taking home flight tickets to said country, or an equally extravagant gift. Pins are the currency among the Expo staff members, as people have been collecting all manner of metallic objects to dangle from their badges. Regular Expo attendees can also walk home with goodie bags — the people that usually end up getting those are the ones that go into a pavilion hosting a concert, performance or other event during the day.

The other element to all this swag is the amount of corporate materials that have been accumulating at the Expo over the past several months. Much of it is in back rooms and storage facilities inside the pavilions. Reams of paper with event schedules listed. Thousands of books and/or magazines giving overviews of the country. Advertisements for upcoming events. Stuffed animals to be handed out to children. Boxes of Expo pins.

Corporate events that get held inside conference rooms and press centers at the pavilions now have dozens of leftover posters and sponsorship materials around office spaces.

It’s almost like they’re running out of room. One might happen to catch a glance of a corporate sponsor with a random poster board advertisement lurking in an obscure corner of the pavilion. There might be free booklets or leaflets for visitors to take home, featuring information on a popular company from the country.

The oddest thing I’ve run into at the Expo is the Den Braven sealants on display inside the Romania pavilion, leftover from an economic conference held earlier in the year. Sealants, as in the stuff one lines their bathtub with to make sure water doesn’t leak through the floor, or a substance one might use on the roofing or gutters of a house.

(Photo: The Den Braven sealants on the third floor of the Romania pavilion).

I happened to be walking to the restaurant inside the pavilion when the display caught my eye — four shelves of canisters.

It is not like Romania can hand out sealants to pavilion visitors, though seeing dozens of people heading home with Zwaluw Hybrifix Super 7 elastic adhesive sounds hilarious.

It begs the question, what happens to all this stuff? There are staff members who have unopened cellular phone boxes still sitting in their apartments, gifts from pavilion sponsors that have gone unused. There are thousands of goodie bags from pavilions — nap sacks that contain some combination of a small flag, maybe a stuffed animal or a small token from the pavilion, a booklet, tea bags or trinkets — that may or may not be handed out by the end of the Expo.

There has yet to be any definitive decisions made on where all this “stuff” goes post-Expo. There are still 70+ days left. Will it be given away to the last patrons visiting the Expo? Will it be thrown out? Or will all this stuff find its way to online auction Web sites in the coming months, branded with an official “2010 Shanghai World Expo” product and sold at twice the price?

Strange Expo Connections

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:13:00 +0800

“Hi, I’m from the Finland pavilion. We’re inquiring about a specific event at the Expo,” the female voice said when I answered the phone.

I’d never seen the number before.

“You’re from the Finland pavilion?” I asked. I know the public relations people at the Finland pavilion. I have their contact numbers already in my phone. I had know idea who this person was calling me. “How do you know me?” I asked.

“I am sorry,” she said, and hung up.

That was odd.

I shot an email over to the pavilion, and they have no idea who called me. They confirmed, based on the number I provided them, that it did not come from the pavilion. When I tried calling the number back, no one answered.

I realized that in the nearly four months working at the Expo, I’ve handed out more than 2,000 business cards with my phone number and email. I rarely get emails, but random phone calls and texts from strange numbers are becoming more frequent.

Part of it has to do with me giving my card out to everyone I interview. Whether it is simply asking an Expo attendee for a quote about his or her thoughts of a pavilion, or a minister visiting the Expo for a conference, everyone I speak with gets a business card. It is just something I do.

It’s led to some interesting phone calls. On no less than three occasions I had full conversations with Chinese people I apparently talked to at the Expo who wanted my opinion on which pavilions to visit while they were still in Shanghai. I had no recollection of who they were.

They identify themselves, but I interview 20 - 30 Chinese people a week, collecting opinions about pavilions and events that take place. If someone says they’re Zheng Yi from Sichuan, and I spoke with them at the concert put on by a Colombian music group at Americas Square two weeks ago, I cannot for the life of me put a face with that name. I can dig through my notes and pull up what they said to me, but more often than not, they could just as easily tell me they are Zhang Ziyi or Wen Jiabao. I’d believe them.

On a side note: without a doubt Colombia has the best concerts at the Expo. I’ve covered several of them. If one happens to be in Shanghai over the next 10 weeks, the Colombia pavilion Web site lists three more concerts left for the Expo. Word.

Back to the business card conundrum.

I got a phone call at 3 a.m. from what sounded like a very drunk government official who I met at a conference in the Expo inviting me to visit his province. He might just have been out very late, suddenly realized bringing a foreigner to his home city was be a good idea, and then called me without thinking. I don’t want to implicate anyone. It was a very funny conversation, but I told him I would take a raincheck on the excursion.

High school students such as the ones photographed above often give me their QQ number — China’s AIM or MSN messenger service — after taking a business card. Don’t read too much into that.

I get text messages from random phone numbers asking me if it is raining in Shanghai or what the waiting time is at a specific pavilion. I have never seen these numbers before. Maybe I should call up China Mobile and ask if I could charge people for answering these kinds of questions.

I want to believe all the business cards I’ve handed out over the past few months will help me further down the road. But when random people call up and identify themselves as employees of a pavilion, it makes me wonder just how far my number is spreading, and if that is really a good thing.