It’s 5am local time. I’ve been up for 22 hours… and this was supposed to be a vacation… Hopefully I can recount what happened today. I’ll try my best.
As previously mentioned, we had opening day tickets to the Expo. We decided to take our time in the morning and we got breakfast a la Carrefour (think French Wal-Mart w/ food court). There was a yo tiao shop which also had Mai-Tsai Koh-Roh (basically my dream diner) and a Dunkin Donuts (mochi donut overload). After hammering our faces with foods, we headed the Expo site.
^I was too excited and forgot to take picture of the yo-tiao…
On the way to the Expo, we were saluted by a PLA soldier (ya know, we’re kind of a big deal). Actually, Sara had startled this poor soldier when she ran up to him and asked him for directions (in Chinese). He saluted her, then realized what he had done, and helped us with directions. It was pretty awesome. I then ordered a military motorcade to the Expo.
We arrived via cab after opening/after the rush of folks.
We mosied our ways to the Chinese pavilion, only to find out that to get in, we needed reservation tickets. These tickets were given out at the opening… so we were SOL. There were tons of people finding this out with us, and one Chinese lady quipped,
“WHAT? We’re Chinese! And we can’t get into the Chinese Pavilion?!”
HOWEVER! We were extremely fortunate and found two ladies who worked for the company that supplied all the furniture for the Chinese Pavilion. They gave us two tickets for the 7:30-pm tour. So, we started exploring other pavilions.
^Sara and I ran to Iran’s pavilion but then we saw it was bff’s with North Korea. We went to N. Korea instead.
Inside the N. Korean pavilion…
We quickly left and headed for the Moroccan Pavilion. The whole place reeked of new paint. They had glass walkway that housed fountains underneath (the coolest part).
^Inside were museum like exhibits with historical items from the country (pottery, clothing, tools, etc).
Since we saw the N. Korean Pavilion, we ventured off to the S. Korean Pavilion. Unfortunately, everyone loves S. Koreans so the line was hours long.
Ok next… We walked by some more pavilions only to find similar lines (Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia, India) and finally found a short line at Nepal. Their pavilion was quite spectacular (from the exterior), except, their exhibits were unfinished…
^FAIL. What does the outside look like? well you’ll have to wait ’til I post photos from the 2nd day at the Expo…
Hours had passed by now, and we decided to take shelter from the heat. We headed towards the Cultural Center. Inside was a hockey/ice rink, restaurants, movie theaters, and a performance hall where the Philadelphia Symphony was going to play on Friday. The center looks like a giant UFO and has a balcony spanning the entire circumference of the building.
^View from the CC of the Saudi and Indian Pavilions.
We ate, hydrated, sugar-ated and ventured off again. The square on one end of the Cultural Center turned out to be a misting garden where many people were using as shelter from the heat:
We decided to check out the Europe/America’s end of the Expo and found many of the same things… 2+ hour long lines at NZ, Australia, France, Italy, UK, Denmark, Germany, etc… (look on Facebook for some of these pavilions). We found one lonely pavilion, Finland, and it was pretty neat!
They had a really cool Nokia exhibit where you you stood in front of a phone camera which took 5 shots. Then the photos were plastered across a wall made up of phone LCD screens.
The sun started getting low, and we kept on going
Following Finland, we looked at Denmark again but lines were long.
We were fortunate to find another friendless pavilian, Slovenia. Their greeter enthusiastically ushered us into their space and gave us books written by a famous Slovenian author.
^apparently Slovenians love trippy lighting, and ONLY trippy lighting.
We made our way through what should have been experienced with mushrooms and then headed towards the US Pavilion. We arrived only to find it was kind of crappy so we bailed on our country and went to China.Talk about the story of our lives…
Actually, we only had 30-min to make it across the expo site to the Chinese Pavilion but we lucked out and caught a people mover with a family headed to the same place. The parents pointed out to their kids that I was a Chinese person and Sara was a foreigner (why-gwo-ren). Sara then proceeded to say something to me in Chinese and everyone in the car gasped and then the interview questions came flooding out. The family’s kids had just learned to talk but proceeded to recite some memorized poems and impress everyone, adorafrickenble.
We made our ways into the Chinese pavilion. The Expo was in a ways, a way of showing the world to the Chinese people (Whereas the Beijing Olympics was a way of showing China to the world).
Dwarfed and located below/next to the Chinese Pavilion were the HK, Taiwan and Macao Pavilions.
Very interesting.
The tour sequence brought us up to the top of the pavilion where we watched a 10-minute long patriotic movie that was shown on three screens that surrounded you (the ceiling was a giant screen too). After the movie, Sara had to bail to meet up with her special gentleman friend (her bf).
It was nearing closing time and the site started to clear out. I stuck around for some photos:
Expo Road
Flag Gardens
After the Expo, I met up with an old Industrial Design classmate, Cole, at a dive bar in Shanghai. He moved to Shanghai for work (at Monster Toys). The bar was known for their music scene among ex-pats; and his friend was rapping there that night. The DJ was spitting out mad mashups, and I will say that the next Eminem is coming out of Shanghai.
He introduced me to his coworkers and friends and I learned how to play rock paper scissors games and Chinese dice games. We departed the bar after some time for another bar, S’us. On the way, we crashed a family mart for food and drink. FFWD to now and It’s 5-something-am. Time for bed. Peace out y’all.
First, the compliment: you've got a tremendous eye for composition and subject. I don't want to say I'm necessarily “jealous” in the usual connotations of the word, but I'm definitely between impressed (with awe) and envious. Some of the scenes you're able to visualize are really quite creative. There's that lame quote that relates the stages of photography and how well someone uses light, but I think understanding how to expose is somewhat procedural… knowing how to make a subject “speak” is far more practiced. Really well-done.
You've also done a good job at creating an interesting narrative! Some very amusing stories. 🙂
I'm assuming most of these were with the a900 — what'd you think of the S90 after using it for awhile?
And finally, I don't know if you want comments here or via email — I have another friend who keeps a photo blog who likes comments on the blog, but if you want me to send an email instead, that works, too. Happy to oblige either way.
thanks! the S90 is niice… i'll wait for competitors to release their versions… and comment on the blog!
dude. don't even need to go to the expo now that i've got your blog to visit!