“I won’t stay in Shanghai forever, but I know that I am in a place where history in the making. In 20 years from now, I want to be able to say, “I was there.” -Chitra Hepburn
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to The World Expo I go. I ended up getting a couple of invites to special presentations, so two days in a row I rescheduled all of my appointments and headed to The World Expo. (I’m not one to turn down an offer for an inside tour and skip the epic lines (up to 5 hours in some places).
My first taste was GM’s presentation. I wrote a detailed piece about it for Planet Green~ but here’s the quick and dirty version: if we continue to produce at our current rate, GM predicts that by 2030 there will be 1.2 billion cars on our planet. They also said that 1/3 of the fuel consumed in China by vehicles is searching for parking (hmmf). GM is apparently vying to be a big player in the development of eco cities, and has developed an entirely new grid for a pod (say bye-bye car) that you could drive if you had a lobotomy (the pod drives by itself on a grid, all you need to do is program it where to go).
Truth be told, I found their marketing campaign more fascinating than their product. It was kind of fun to see how differently they market to a Chinese audience. It reminded me of their flair for drama, but I found it particularly fascinating that the entire campaign was based around making the connection between freedom of mobility to freedom to love the person you most long for. Now I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to tell you, if I was, I might start wondering if this concept of “the future freeing you from the task of driving your car” wasn’t a brilliant scheme to have complete control of a society.
In the middle of the presentation, they served us lunch. Each round table of 12 was suddenly surrounded by 7 wait staff who set and served the table in 4 minutes flat. I’m not quite sure what I did to disturb the system (might have kept my computer on the table too long), but while everyone around the table suddenly had a fully cooked and steaming meal in font of them, myself and another fellow found ourselves without lunch after the wait staff had moved on to the next table. “Anything is possible is China” laughed the woman beside me. And I would gain a deeper understanding of what that meant as my time in China progressed.
While at the Expo, I had the good fortune of meeting Chitra, who ignited my excitement about all of the possibility in Shanghai and said the quote at the top of this post. She recently helped produce the China Green Tech Report (among other topics it covers what is viable in the next 1-3 years). She had some great insight into the green scene in Shanghai. She spoke about the cost factor of making sustainable materials and why she believes a sustainable Shanghai is possible: and introduced a common theme that I would hear repeated: When it comes to sustainability issues, there is a distinct advantage when a communist government decides it is going to “go green”.
But it was the UK Pavilion that won my heart~ I wrote a full description of the exhibition, but here are two videos that should bring some pleasure.
“Leah, don’t be so nice~ you need to take care of yourself first.”
That was what my friend for the day at the world expo announced to me when we were making our way onto the bus. It was a message akin to the one I had received the day before while getting on the train~ “elbows out.” It’s the basic survival skills you need to have in an over populated society. And while I was fine to sit back and be entertained by what to a gringo tourist, her words landed. The over population thing is for real~ and it influences the way you walk, think, take in and assimilate information.
That night Mihela and Ina took me to see a young acrobatics company. Sadly, I continued my track record of falling asleep at every evening performance I attended. However, that was more commentary on my jet lag (they say it takes a day to received for every hour of time difference). The performance was an extraordinary blend of dance styles~ 100 or so dancers showing off everything from ballet, to the extreme practice of monk acrobatics, to break dancing at the end. Mihela laughed on our way out~ “THAT is China in a nutshell. Fusion.”
Meanwhile, if you want actual inside scoop on The World Expo, check out Adam Minter’s blog www.shanghaiscrap.com
