going to the World Expo with my family was an interesting experience. you'd have to wait in line for several hours to get into the popular pavillions - China, Japan, USA, etc. so we skipped those and went to the unpopular ones with no lines. the first one we visited was "Pavilion of the Future". it had a couple of exhibits on sustainable development and city planning, all of them of the techno-fix variety, but cool nonetheless.
next we took a boat across the river and went to the Iran pavillion. now, the relationship between Iran and China has always been cordial, going back to the days of the Silk Road. Among other cool things, there was a laser harp, a mural of president Ahmedinejad kissing the hand (it might as well have been the ass) of Ayatollah Khaminei, and Persian rugs that were ri-cock-ulously expensive. We had some Persian tea and some kind of yellow pudding which was very yummy. i'd love to go to Iran.
we hurried over to the Israel pavillion, only to find it closed earlier than usual. with nothing else worth seeing, we took the subway home. it felt like taking the BART or the Underground, but way more crowded. Shanghai has over 18 million people. that's more than twice the population of Washington state. "Mountains and oceans of people," as they say in Chinese. people here are rude and irritable, always cutting in front of you and pushing you around. living in such an overcrowded city will inevitably bring out these qualities, i guess. you'd have to come here to understand what overpopulation feels like - as a bodily sensation. i don't know if i can ever get used to it.
i'm not staying here for too long. onwards to better pastures.
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