Expo and Knives

That's an odd title. I'll explain it later.

The primary purpose of our trip to Shanghai, China, was as always, to visit family, friends and just enjoy the city. But this time we were also eager to see the Shanghai World Expo!

The Expo Mascot - I called him 'Gumby Dammit' (SNL reference)

World Expo is the new version of 'World's Fair'. This year's theme was "Better City, Better Life". Each participating nation was to showcase their cities, life and their future.

There were over 250 countries represented. After just two days, we had only visited 10 pavilions. And, unfortunately, we'd had enough.

Ren Shan, Ren Hai

It was not so much the 300,000 to 400,000 visitors per day, the place was large enough to handle that volume. It was the long lines at just about every pavilion. Most all of them were not designed to handle that many people per day.

Some of the more popular pavilions, like the USA, Japan, South Korea, had waiting lines as long as 2-3 hours, just to get in for a 15-30 minute experience. We never made it to those.

Here are some pictures of those we did make it into.

 Inside the Sri Lanka Pavilion

 Finland Entrance

 Inside Finland you could get your picture floated up on the wall

A New Zealand Tiki ??

And some photos outside around the expo grounds.

The park lit up at night was quite pretty

 During the day it was and endless expanse of concrete

One thing that disappointed me most about the expo grounds was the lack of green spaces. It was mostly concrete, with little shade, and very little natural shade, which made the whole place less inviting - and a lot hotter than it should have been.

Perspective Distortion is an Ugly Mistress

Of course, we had to go to the China pavilion, it was one of the largest and most iconic. Inside there were 55 sub-pavilions, each representing the 55 ethnic minorities of China.

The costumes worn by their hostesses were very beautiful as well, so I had to get some shots of them.

I'm married, not dead.

Each day of the expo would be 'National Day' for one of the represented countries. Typically, the country would put on a show or dance at one of the many outdoor stages. Here is the Republic of Korea:



And lastly, knives:

Guns are forbidden in China. You never hear of a shooting there. Stabbings, yes - unfortunately. There were a rash of stabbing, especially of school children, in China this year. So it appears that removing guns does not necessarily remove crime - violent crime. As with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the 2010 Expo in Shanghai enacted a ban on the sale of all but the smallest of knives.

You could not buy a knife of any kind, including kitchen knives, in any of the regular stores. Department stores, mom & pop stores, convenience stores, no-where. Only specific government run knife shops could sell knives during Expo. We wanted to buy a knife so we could do some cooking in our kitchen, but ended up borrowing one from my father-in-law until we found a shop that could sell them.

Then, in order to buy the knife, you had to register it: provide your phone number and national ID card and number. It was just like buying a hand-gun in the States, without the 7 day waiting period. It seemed extreme, but appears to work. Then again, what's to keep someone from picking up a rock...