Keepin' it Commie

Continuing with the theme naming, here's a report from the land of China!

Well, technically I'm not in China anymore, but Blogger, like most other social networking sites, was blocked there.

I spent most of my time alternating between Shanghai and parts of Southern China. The contrast between highly urbanized areas like Shanghai and the mostly undeveloped, rural areas I visited in Southern China is striking. They both have their beauty, charm, and drawbacks, but it is interesting to see just how different they are.

Shanghai is fast becoming the most globalized city in China, even more so than Beijing. Small wonder it was chosen as the host of the World Expo this year, to the excitement of its residents and travel agencies. The whole city is plastered with ads for the World Expo, and it seems to be all people talk about. The mascot shows up everywhere; from subway walls to TV ads to toilet paper.

<--Looks a little like sentient toothpaste if you ask me

The expo itself is pretty impressive; it spans over two square miles of prime real-estate across both banks of the Huangpu River with literally hundreds of buildings. Crazy!
Wikipedia: Organisers called the outdoor show "the largest searchlight display in history, the largest collection of multi-coloured laser firepower ever assembled in one place, the world’s largest LED screen, one of the largest dancing water fountains ever, and the “largest light show ever attempted”.

That's a lot of largest-evers.

Of course, with something so large, it'd be a shame if no one showed up, but they don't seem to be having that problem at all. The lines are incredibly long, and make you feel like you're playing 3-hour games of Snake. The worst offender is probably Saudi Arabia, who had the most expensive (and thus more popular) building, with an average of 8 hours of lining up. To spend any less than 3 hours in line, you have to get up at 5:30AM, line up in front of the Expo gates until it opens at 9:00AM, and then make a mad dash of 1km to where the line is. Even elderly people with canes are attempting to run there, it's ridiculous.



The line is around a mile away from the building and takes about 7 hours at this point, counting all the switchbacks. That means you're going at 12 ft/min, or .2 ft/sec.


For those of you who are unclear on what exactly the World Expo is, it is essentially countries building edgy modern buildings to show off how awesome they are. Nowadays, that amounts to using a lot of projector screens in creative ways and showing lots of promo videos. Sometimes I walk into a building, go "oooh, aaaah", and then walk out having no idea of what I just saw.

Some cool buildings:

I spent most of my time in Southern China traveling to different scenic areas, many of which are very rural. It was a huge contrast with Shanghai, and a very different kind of beautiful from the gleaming glass and steel.
Some photos from scenic areas:




Whoops, don't know why he's not rotated

Sadly, though, these places have become tourist hotspots for their natural beauty, which is doing a number on the environment and adversely affecting the areas.

Other than traveling, I've been doing art as usual. In my spare time, I've been designing t-shirts, some of which may or may not be TD themed. I'll throw them up here if I manage to make some I like.

ASHÉ (and apologies for the excessively long post).