Shanghai World Expo 2010

If you are Chinese or have visited China in the last six months you would have heard about the Expo in Shanghai. It is the number one attraction in China at the moment, and throughout its five month long lifetime, the number of attendees has averaged to around two to three hundred thousand people a day. Since its opening in May, the Chinese have been visiting in their millions aided by the free tickets that the government has given out to each family causing hours of queuing to get into the pavillions at the site.

Dying to find out what all the fuss was about, Jacky and I joined the masses and headed down to the Expo sight in Shanghai. The Expo for those of you don't know (don't worry, I didn't know anything about it before coming) is a exposition of world fairs and many cities have hosted it in the past.

UK pavillion at the Shanghai Expo2010

China being China - had promised the biggest and greatest Expo at Shanghai with over 190 countries participating.  For £16 entrance fee, we could experience a slice of life in each participating country's pavillion. The weather was hot - about 33 degrees and we weren't looking forward to the horrendous queues we'd heard about to get into each country's pavillion. The China pavillion was a complete no-no. There was a separate ticket you had to get in the morning when the gates opened and frankly we came too late to get one.

But actually the queues weren't too bad - we avoided the ones that looked huge - like Japan which would have taken 3 hours. And because we brought our UK passport we were allowed a fast track into the UK pavillion, skipping 2 hours of queuing...hooray!!! The UK pavillion was actually one of the most spectactular at the Expo - we certainly felt that the UK did ourselves proud.

Inside the Seed Cathedral: UK pavillion

Inside the Seed Cathedral in the UK pavillion i.e. that giant capsule with 60,000 tubes sticking out (see picture above) we were surrounded on all sides by the end of the tubes. As you can see, inside each tube there are different kinds of seed,  collectively it looked quite extraordinary. I did hear a rumour that upon the end of the Expo, the British would send schools in China one tube each so they could plant the seeds and carry on the legacy of the UK pavillion. Lovely idea but not sure if this is entirely true!

We actually managed to visit quite a few pavillions at the Expo - admittedly we were only interested in the ones that didn't have much of a queue so we did end up at random ones like Oman  and Tunisia. Jacky and I were keen to pop into the Mauritian pavillion though there was not much to see unfortunately.

Me demonstrating the Mauritian pavillion

There was a Mauritian stall selling nicknacks from Mauritius and also bottles of the infamous Green Island Rum. I tried to bargain with the Mauritians running the stall speaking a bit of creole and managed to get the price down on a bottle of rum to £8. However it was more impressive to hear the Mauritians speaking perfect Mandarin to the Chinese.

The pavillion which we enjoyed the most was the South African pavillion. The reason being was that with a bit of teamwork between Jacky and I, we managed to blag our way into a wine and food tasting event which was strictly restricted to industry people only. However we worked the Ah Fong charm offensive to the max and we were soon sitting amongst 40 VIPs and our friends Tom and Maria (who we got in too), listening to the South African wine expert and tasting 6 different wines. After the wine tasting we were served some South African delicacies including wittchety grub and caterpillar. Hmmm, don't think i'll be trying THAT again! Wine was freely flowing and we readily took advantage of it. As wine in China is pretty awful and the imported stuff is horrifically expensive; it was fantastic to drink good quality wine after not having it for 3 months.The evening was topped off by a kind donation of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to Jacky by the nice wine expert.  After drinking our fill, we headed out merrily into the night - we had been in the South African pavillion for 4 hours!