My experience of the visit to Shanghai World Expo 2010 (Ganesh Thada)

‘The world is being a real global village’!

Preface
Being a citizen of china’s close neighbor, I have heard a lot about China and read through Internet. While I was in UNMIL Mission in Liberia 2004, UNMIK mission in Kosovo during 2006-2008 and course period in Italy 2005, I get an opportunity to eye-witness about China’s trading influence in the world. After the nomination on this course, I went through some books & website. After having classes about China ABC here in the course, I got lot knowledge about China but still it was not enough. 2010.10.10 was the great day as it was the starting day of our tour to shanghai & Hangzhou. The tour gave us more clear pictures and concept of the Chinese development, diplomacy, its strategy and leading initiative role to built the harmonious world.

General background
In the journey of the human civilization, the people passed several centuries with different experiences and eras. Nobody can exactly tell the age of the Earth and the existence of the human being in this world. But obviously after certain civilization, people started to share common interest, forming some social groups. The concepts of the states were appeared in the later part of the civilized human history and after that everything is being started to keep in record. But the inherent selfish nature of the human society did not allow preserving it in its original form and started to project in their own way as according to the interests of winners. So lots of wars have been fought and destroyed a lot. Due to this reason, the history of human civilization is not moving in smooth track as the rise and fall of the empire have been seen throughout the history.

If we just look at the World War I & II, so many examples can be found which proves the rise and fall of the countries. After the world war, majority of the people became more conscious about the result of the wars and humanity. After its realization, the countries agreed to form the international organizations like United Nations to lead the world on the path of peace and harmony. They found several ways of organizing the worlds’ peoples; through the games, cultural exchange programs and exchange of education and technology etc. Among other several ways the world Expo is one of the best means to bring the world together.

History of the Expo
The history of world expo started from 1851 from the first world expo in London. From the first World Expo, the World Expos have been held successively for many years. After the 1933 World Expo Chicago, it is continuously gearing upto this stage. Since then some norms were established under some guidelines to achieve definite themes. However during the WW II period, it war irregular. But after that it is being held in more regular way, in different places of the world. This includes Aichi, Japan 2005, Rostock Germany 2003, Lisbon 1998, and Kunming/ China 1999 etc. Shanghai World Expo 2010 is 40th succession of the World Expo.

The World Expositions have attained increasing prominence as grand events for economic, scientific, technological and cultural exchanges, serving as an important platform for displaying historical experience, exchanging innovative ideas, demonstrating esprit de corps and looking to the future. With a long civilization, China favors international exchange and loves world peace. China owes its successful bid for the World Exposition in 2010 to the international community’s support for and confidence in its reform and opening-up. It was not a easy job, as it inherently requires years of preparations and efforts. In 2005, the international expo organization decided to hold the 40th world Expo in Shanghai, China. With setting an organization and the series of meetings on Special Regulation No. 4 Concerning Construction, Installation, Workplace Safety, Fire Prevention, and Environmental Protection in June 2007, Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination declared and signed. After that all kinds of preparation were started. All participating nation and their representatives were scrumptiously followed in the development of their respective nations pavilions and other developments.

Beginning of the Expo & its Display
A big day of the expo was inaugurated by Chinese President Hu Jintao and International Exhibitions Bureau President Jean Prerre Lafon in attendance of the 20 world leaders including 16 head of states and the governments one 1st May 2010, leaving the milestone effect on the history of the world expo. The grand ceremony was held with a dazzling display of artistic performances, fancy fireworks and high technologies at around 20:00 hrs at the expo culture center.

In the Expo some 189 countries were displayed in their respective pavilions and in Joint pavilions. Besides the countries pavilions, there are some 28 extra pavilions including UN Pavilion and developmental, informative and business oriented pavilions. Which is divided into five zones namely Zone A, Zone B, Zone C, Zone D and Zone E. Among them Zone A and Zone C have more numbers of Pavilions. In China Pavilion there are two components, one is china pavilion and another is joint china pavilion which contains representative information, representative things and the history of 32 provinces of China.
The expo site spread in 5.28 Sq K.M. areas along both side of the Huangpu River. For the management and security, 8 entrances/ exit gates are managed. Beside this, media center, security and information centers, medical points, musical performance center and other necessary service points are provided in places. In addition specialized services such as Customs Clearance, Logistics, Radio frequency application, ITVR Signals, Language service, telecommunication and internet access, Transport and Accommodation are provided.

Emblem
The emblem, depicting the image of three people-you, me, him/her holding hands together, symbolizes the big family of mankind inspired by the shape of the Chinese character “世”(meaning the world). The design conveys the organizers’ wish to host an Expo which is of global scale showing the diversified urban cultures of the world.

Slogan: ‘Better city, better life:
The theme of the Shanghai Expo is “Better City, Better life”. More then the half of the world population is expected to live in the cities by 2010. The prospect of future urban life, a subject of global interest, concerns all nations developed or less developed and their people. Being the first world Exposition on the theme of city, 2010 Expo was expected to attract governments and the people from across the world focusing on the theme. It is the great event to explore the full potential of urban life in the 21th century and its significance. It is in fact guiding the world for the better urban life with combination of development of technology, cultural values and humanitarian feel.

Volunteers
The grand success of world expo 2010 is result of the ‘better management and utilization of the volunteers, by the organizer and Chinese government. More then 1,00,000 volunteers are on help inside the expo and outside of the expo i.e. at the city to provide service, assistance and guide to the visitors. Everyday around 5000 volunteers are serving inside expo with the main slogan of “At your service at Expo”, “My will, My help, My Pleasure”, “2010 we are together as one” and “Our City, Our Joy”. Volunteers are selected by the organizer and trained in various aspects so as to serve in the best manners. All the volunteers are working in such a perfect way that we can’t imagine it. If we Nepali were there, most of them would have roaming around indifferently. I can say it is the perfect example of trained manpower with dedication and discipline.

Shanghai World Expo 2010: A miniature global village!
In the second day of our tour program, we visited the Shanghai world Expo 2010. We started to visit from China pavilion, which is the attraction of the expo 2010. We enjoyed the magical display of the pavilion with the historical, representative and scenic presentation of provinces of china as well as artistic presentations. After that we visited to Pakistan pavilion Sri Lankan pavilion and Indian Pavilion and able to reach our beloved pavilion of Nepal. One after another we have visited most of the countries of all continents. Oh! What a wonderful show? Able to visit most of the countries in a day; with the representative structures and lots of incredible information!

According to the design, flow of visitors and decoration Nepal Pavilion falls under top 10 pavilions. I feel proud and thanked to china at least you provide us such a platform to introduce Nepal to the world people. The miniature of the swyambhunath was the real attraction there in Nepal pavilion and the Buddha’s statue also attracting the visitors there. What I realized is in Nepal’s main attracting thing to the world people is Buddha and Buddhism. But Buddha inside his motherland is in dusk as some politician and so called intellect are not happy to declared Nepal as secular nation! I have a question to them, how can you attract the tourists merely announcing the visit Nepal Years, without identifying the core theme of the attractions?

We could able to have Nepali food/taste at Nepal Pavilion; and some time discussing about the activities of the Expo and started the tour of the world through, Asia up to Africa, Europe, America and Australia. Wow! What a marvelous decoration, wonderful management and remarkable sanitation! There are large queues in Saudi Arabian pavilion, UK, USA, German, Japan and Macao pavilions so we could not enter inside and enjoy the look as to entered there must wait for up to 4 hours. There was not any single pavilions without line queue but in some pavilion there were less and in some there are more.
The feet were tired but mind still eager and hungry to visit rest of the world. But our obligation is, that was the only provided time to visit so we paid maximum effort to visit the global village as much as we could and make a tour of mini world. After the revolutionary development of the information technology and other technologies, we realized with certainty that ‘the world is being a global village’. The Shanghai world Expo 2010 really made us feel that the world is really a mini village. The village, where you can easily go, walk, share the ideas, learn something, eat and enjoy. In real you can feel the global environment and learn so many things at a place, only in the price of 160 Chinese Yuan.

Visitors:
The expo was inaugurated on 1st May 2010 and remains open till 31th October 2010. 189 participating countries were decorated in the expo site and till 23rd October. the expected visitor i.e. 70 Million persons have already visited the expo site, in an average of 0.4 million/day. The maximum flow of the visitors is on 22nd October. On that day, 8,67,600 persons visited the expo. In the history of world Expo; in most of the previous Expo places average visitors were around 1,50,00,000 and the representing countries were less then 155. Yet 7 days to come for the closing ceremony, so it could exceed 80 million visitors.

Message of the shanghai Expo 2010
Hosting this, Shanghai world expo 2010 and organizing in a wonderful manner, China is able to shake the world once again, like in Beijing Olympic 2008. I was in Athens on the day of grand opening ceremony Beijing Olympic 2008; which in fact cleared the cloudy image of china, created by western media & countries. There were lot of ready-made rumors about pollution and democracy in china. But the huge successes of Beijing Olympic brought them naked and the image of china leaped forward to the world power. This event painted China as one of the capable state to manage such a huge event on such praiseworthy end. I believe that the success of Shanghai World Expo 2010 will take china further ahead.

The successful, splendid and unforgettable organization of the world expo 2010, by Chinese people and the government has given several messages to the world through this extraordinary show: That is
1. It is proved that the world is a mini-global village; one can share and learn the world at a place having the core issue and modality of world’s 189 countries, which were presented at a place.
2. China initiated for the harmonious world through the expo and strived to learn/follow other developed countries.
3. China gathered the world together and provided the platform, for the tourist, to visit and learn about the countries with its characteristic features. China is able to gather the world people with good reason to have a look, feel, learn and change their attitude towards china. On the other hand china is educating its own citizen about ‘what the world is’ and how to be civilized.
4. China is making the platform to mobilize and inspire its huge populated citizen so they won’t go in a devil minded tasks of the political agitation and at the same time educating the young generation to work as volunteers for the shake of the national pride.
5. China is trying to set the uptimum limit of ‘the standard of the develop city’ as the slogan of the Expo is “Better city, better life” which is proved by the decoration and management of the expo as millions of the people were visiting the expo every day without any problem and mentionable thing is sanitation of the expo site. It is obviously giving good lessons internally and externally.
6. It is able to bring the amalgamation of the cultural diversity and economic prosperity in the city and interactions between urban and rural societies.
7. The expo is able to shape the remodeling of human communities by adding on the cultural values on the urban life and to vitalize the core values of mankind.
8. It has shown the perfect example of the innovations, decoration and management of science and technology in the urban life.
The most remarkable thing here is the sanitation that this week everyday the average visitors are around 8,50,000 still the expo site is perfectly cleaned without any trace of the dirt. It is really unbelievable hence the perfect example of civilization. On the other hand the design and decoration of the expo site is exemplarily and constructions are unimaginable. All this really proved that china is the nation who can set the extraordinary examples. I can say the development is not only the resources but it is the combination of idea, planning, resources, willingness, determination and disciplined execution.

Conclusion:
Organizing such a huge program in a perfect way, china has become able to set the milestone in the history of World Expo and strive for the global harmony in a humble way. Some 80 million people have directly learnt much about the world and some billion people are aware and able to set the global concept through this expo. I believe it is the starting point of new era for the human being for the global prosperity, harmony and peace of the world.

It is the historical record to gather such a huge mass and educate them the finest thing of the world with in 184 days of exposition. It is also an ironic platform to the world people to create eco-friendly society and maintain the sustainable development of human being. It also proved as the base for innovation and interaction for the people of the world having cultural diversity in the course of development and win- win cooperation for the better future of the mankind.

But, why my own country is seems uninformed as in a deep asleep? What type of neighbor we are, who does not hear, see or feel such a effect leaving loud clamor of the neighbor? Why are not learning such a good thing from the neighbor? King Prithivi Narayan Shah saya that “Arti Gharti ko pani linu” should not we need to see the around, how the things are going on and come out from dark and gloomy thoughts and narrow mind?

thadamganesh@yahoo.com
– Shanghai

4 thoughts on “My experience of the visit to Shanghai World Expo 2010 (Ganesh Thada)

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