 EXHIBITOR @ EXPO 2010:
DAY FIVE |
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| Using a large stark-white plate and projection technology, this element in the Portugal Pavilion makes various traditional ceramic patterns come to life before visitors’ eyes. |
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| Who needs language to tell a story? These simple touchscreen activities in the World Wide Fund for Nature Pavilion (inside the International Organizations Pavilion) teach children and adults alike how their actions impact our environment. |
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| Another one of WWF’s simple activities that communicates a crystal-clear message without the need for much text. |
Desperate to see another snippet of Shanghai outside the Expo grounds, we started our fifth morning with a quick visit to the 16th century Yuyuan Garden. Built in the Ming Dynasty, it's five acres of peace and quiet in one of the oldest parts of Shanghai — a city of almost 20 million where the average noise level is equal to a jetliner in flight. It's a haven — and maze — of goldfish ponds, wooden bridges, rockeries, man-sized pieces of jade, and even a ship-like cottage where the stone surrounding it was carved to look like splashing waves. But before long, it was time to leave our garden paradise and head back to the Pudong side of Expo 2010.
Portugal had old treaties between that seafaring country and China; Indonesia had an outstanding coffee bar (they're the 4th largest coffee producer in the world and they gave coffee its nickname — Java — after the Indonesian city); Singapore had a rooftop garden on top of a silver-steel spiral-like supertanker; and Finland had a pavilion designed like a glacier with interior hallways. But size isn't everything even at world expos: The best we saw today was the World Wild Fund, which used flash games, cartoon graphics, and the world’s largest spherical aquarium filled with endangered species e that cleverly rendered language irrelevant in a call to action to adults and kids alike.
WWF's exhibit was done by EWI Worldwide, whose representative Shirley Yi treated us to mooncakes in time for the moon festival (they're filled with lotus seed paste, red bean paste, or black bean paste, and sometimes a salty egg that's been aged for much longer than you want to know before you eat it), then treated us to an authentic Chinese dinner afterward. From the cold noodles to the smoked duck to the pineapple-looking pastry that somehow tasted like coconut you just scooped fresh, the meal was a wonderful opportunity to break bread — or in this case, gulp Tsingtao Beer beer — with new friends.
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