China?s Gigantic, Kitschy Future: Inside the Shanghai World Expo

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SHANGHAI, China — Billed as bigger than the Beijing Olympics, the latest and largest world’s fair doesn?t disappoint when it comes to scale, in every mind-boggling respect.

The Shanghai World Expo 2010, which opened May 1, cost an estimated $55 billion (some sources say up to $95 billion) to get off the ground. It sits on 2 square miles of prime Shanghai real estate, straddling the Huangpu River, making it the biggest world’s fair in the 159-year history of such events.

More than 18,000 families and 270 factories were moved to make room for the expo, the construction of which stretched over seven years — all for an event lasting six months.

Organizers estimate that it will be visited by 70 to 100 million people before it closes Oct. 31, with daily crowds of 400,000 or more.

That?s an enormous number of people, and you notice it instantly, from the queues to get into the expo to the crowds on the concourses and pavilions inside. Getting inside the popular European and American pavilions means waiting for an hour or longer outside in 80- to 90-degree heat and high humidity. The dominating $220 million Chinese pavilion is already fully booked for the months of May and June, so unless you?re a VIP with special reservation, you can’t get in at all.

In the past, there would?ve been no question as to whether queuing up for hours was worth it. That’s because what was there would change the future: Fax machines, microscopes, industrial processes, and even the superhighway system all made their first public appearances at world’s fairs.

The Shanghai World Expo 2010 comes up short in that respect. Apart from stunning architectural spaces, there’s nothing new, exciting, or controversial on display — a far cry from say, the 1939 world’s fair.

This expo isn?t so much a world?s fair as a China one, with other countries and global corporations exhibiting as curiosities for the people of a rapidly developing country to see. Only an estimated 5 percent of visitors will be from overseas. For millions of Chinese visitors, the event is a first real contact with the outside world.

For them, the expo is meant to be picture of their future.

If so, it’s an ambitious one.

Above:

Haibao

No Pavilion of the Future worth its salt would be complete without sci-fi space imagery. Here’s the official expo mascot, Haibao, clad in a space suit and breathing apparatus. The pavilion exhibits ideas about future cities, including one in space for Haibao to suit up in.

Photo: Juha Saarinen/Wired.com