Expo – Chinese Style II

As said before, the lines at the Expo were crazy. Every Chinese and their grandmothers (and great grandmothers). We had the choice between waiting for hours or pick less popular pavilions. So we managed to only get into buildings of say less liked nations: Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, Lybia, Syria, Timor-Leste and Mongolia as well as the African and Pacific Island Joint Pavilion etc. So essentially countries who are either war zones or have barely any economy at all. Some of those were rather weird: Mongolia’s chief export seems to be dinosaur eggs?! Iran had Ahmadinejad posters in every direction but played funky Persian music. Timor-Leste had big screen TV with a nature doc and 10 chairs in front of it (It’s only 8 years old as a country, so I guess that’s ok). Palestine, Lybia and Syria all blend together, as they looked almost the same (expect Palestine’s chief export seems to be name plates saying: “Jerusalem, Capital of Palestine”). North Korea had a little river, a little bridge and a little cave. And tons of pictures of smiling kids with the slogan: Paradise for People.

On way to get people (especially kids) interested in all countries was the Expo passport, where you had a space for each country. Of course you had long lines in every pavilion just for the stamps (in some, the people were not interested at all in anything but the stamps). I’m guilty myself of getting a couple of interesting ones. I really wanted to get the Palestine and the Israel one next to each other. But I couldn’t get into the Israel pavilion, so I couldn’t see the face of Israels official stamper either. Would have been fun.

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