The Expo (III)

[petronia]

* Latvia
* North Korea
* Iran

I did the most shopping on the "Axis of Evil" tour. North Korea was doing a very brisk trade in souvenirs, which I guess one should have expected: irony (like the future) is unevenly distributed, and where there is uneven distribution there is a marketplace. Anyway, how else are you going to buy North Korean stamps? eBay, probably... I got this Kim Jong Il tract translated into English - "Let Us Effect A New Upsurge In Producing Works Of Revolutionary Art And Literature" - which is only funny until one reads it.

Iran was quite good - in a similar mode to India, except saffron rice pudding in lieu of pakora and lassi. The best part was the second-floor carpet shop, where there were genuine wonders of craftsmanship stacked pell-mell alongside the most egregious velvet-painting equivalents one is likely to encounter in a lifetime. XD; Everything was for sale, even the 6"x9" silk miniature mounted in glass that took 20 years to complete (to anyone willing to plunk down 3.5M). Also, saffron, which I love and bought a couple of grams of, probably not at an advantageous price.

Latvia had wisely decided to focus efforts on their visually coolest home-grown technology XD - in this case, a wind tunnel performers can fly in. Time Out Shanghai was holding a contest earlier in the month for tickets to try out the tunnel, sigh. The Most Advanced Japanese Toilet(tm) turned out to be real, but you had to enter a draw to try that out too. The rest of the Japan Industry pavilion was a bit of a letdown - high-production-value adverts - and I wasn't there for concert days, like they had DEPAPEPE and Yoshida Brothers in at some point? The absolute worst in that respect was the German pavilion, which I think you could have staked out for two months at one point and seen every good DJ ever (playing hour-long sets to baffled Chinese grannies, probably, but well). Did catch an excellent Colombian brass band on the Americas Square outdoors stage, and one of the concerts at the South Korea pavilion. It was 15 minutes of traditional drum ensemble, 15 minutes of breakdancing. XD; While this was also a rotating attraction I suspect 15 minutes is not enough time to pull down a screen and give a satisfactory demonstration of national Starcraft skillz.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I've done the Expo for four days out of the past week! I need to, like, spend time with my family... orz The crowds are insane, I think it broke the 800,000 visitors PER DAY mark this Monday? If I were actually living in Shanghai I'd be royally sick of it, you can't get away from the Expo news updates. XD;