Visitors to Shanghai’s World Expo say organizers have plenty of kinks to iron out before the event — the biggest-ever World’s Fair — formally opens on May Day.
“Three big suggestions for fixes: space, time and mindset,” the Shanghai Morning Post said yesterday in the closest China’s state-controlled media came to criticizing the Expo’s first seven-hour trial run, involving 200,000 people.
“If people weren’t lining up, it wouldn’t be cool,” the Post suggested as the proper “mindset” needed to cope with the long queues that visitors faced.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Visitors said they were disappointed with the food, the long lines and the limited number of pavilions open by the time they finally got through security checks and into the vast Expo park.
“Before I went, I was mentally prepared that it would be very crowded, but it turns out I underestimated,” said Ding Yangshen, a 64-year-old retired engineer, who visited the park with his wife using trial run tickets from his government-worker son.
The Expo, which runs from May 1 through Oct. 31, showcases the latest in concepts for “Better City, Better Life,” in pavilions from practically every country and many international organizations, cities and big corporations.
The event is a landmark occasion for Shanghai, giving China’s biggest city a chance to show off its forests of ultramodern skyscrapers and elegant shopping boulevards.
Some 70 million people are expected to visit, and organizers have said they will limit the number entering the park on any single day to 600,000.
For the Shanghainese, who have put up with years of inconvenience from construction of new roads, subway lines and other Expo-related infrastructure, the 10-day trial run will give many a sneak preview of the city’s biggest new attraction.
With only a few pavilions participating, many who visited on the first day left frustrated.
Ding left his home in downtown Shanghai at 7am, but spent two hours lining up to get into the park. He said he only had time to spent a few minutes in the USA Pavilion, which was not running its full program, and that it was too late to get into the China Pavilion — the Expo’s biggest attraction.
He managed to enter the African Pavilion but gave up on queuing for any others.
“It was very disappointing, so we had a walk around and just went home,” Ding said.
Officials in Shanghai, a city of 20 million, have warned to expect long waits, both in security checks and at the entrances to pavilions. Around the city, security has also been tightened: Subway passengers must have their bags scanned and vehicles entering the city also are inspected.
Photos of day one of the trials, which was mostly closed to foreign media, show wall-to-wall people in Expo-linked subway stations, security checks and the open plazas of the park.
Thirsty visitors had to buy drinks or bring an empty bottle to fill up from fountains equipped with filtration systems since Shanghai’s tap water is, according to locals and the US Centers of Disease Control, unsafe to drink.
By the afternoon, the sinks were heaped with trash and Expo convenience store shelves were empty. With simple meals priced at 38 yuan (US$5.50) and up, many visitors went for snacks instead.
“I wasted two hours waiting for a bowl of noodles. The food is at least twice as expensive as it should be,” said a retired woman who gave only her surname, Cai.
Cai left for the Expo park at 5am, but still was unable to get into the China Pavilion, a huge red monument designed to take in only 30,000 visitors a day.
“I am exhausted,” Cai said. “In a word, it is not that fun, very inconvenient,” she said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not