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 A visitor stands at a corner of the French Pavilion, which was opened to the media on Monday. [Yong Kai / for China Daily] |
Reputations, exteriors help draw early birds
SHANGHAI - The seven most popular pavilions during Expo 2010 Shanghai's soft opening, which ended on Monday, belong to the United States, Australia, Spain, France, Japan, Thailand and Italy, Expo organizers said.
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The list omits China's "Oriental Crown", which trumps the others by a huge margin. Many pavilions had still not opened as of Monday.
As some on the list were open temporarily - the USA Pavilion, for example, has only welcomed guests for three mornings of the six-day trial - the rankings may take earlier polls into account. These predicted the US would be the most popular foreign pavilion during Expo 2010.
The rankings also exclude countries that have been highly anticipated but only opened for several hours, such as the United Kingdom. The UK had to close its eye-catching "Seed Cathedral" within three hours last Tuesday due to overcrowding, but it was operating again on Monday, with a sign outside warning people of a three-hour wait.
"A lot of people are going on countries' reputations, countries they know something about," said David Martin, the pavilion's deputy director.
"But once all the blogs get out there and someone says, 'Have you seen the Venezuelan Pavilion? It's amazing', that could all change."
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As one-third of the pavilions were not ready by Monday, lines should shorten from Saturday when the Expo officially opens.
"Once you have 150 pavilions to choose from, people may look at the sign and think twice about coming in. Then again, we've had the sign up all day and it hasn't stopped them (from lining up)," said Martin, as he looked at the lines of people waiting patiently to enter the UK Pavilion.
Visitors seem to have based their decisions on three factors: style, familiarity and ease of access.
"We may have benefited from our location," said Kanda Vajrabhaya, commissioner-general of the Thai Pavilion. The Thai Pavilion is near one of the main entrances and adjacent to the ochre-colored Australia Pavilion, where it can catch some of the overspill.
"We're easily identifiable from our (Thai temple-style) structure," she said. "And we made our three exhibits interactive and high-tech, so word-of-mouth probably helped."
Shanghai resident Fan Yaoqi, 40, who was photographing the Spain Pavilion, said: "The first thing that draws Chinese people is the exterior, because we don't know much about Spain. But if it's beautiful, we want a photo with it."
Made from patterned wicker and designed by Benedetta Tagliabue, the sprawling 8,500-square-meter pavilion plans to have flamenco dancers among its performers.
"We've also got three movies by three famous Spanish filmmakers and people seem very interested in that," said pavilion spokesperson Yang Yue.
Spain bit a 30,000-person chunk out of the 350,000 visitors who scanned their Expo tickets on Sunday. On the same day, Thailand overstepped its 29,000-capacity by 6,000 people.
A total of 100,000 people visited The Expo on Monday, taking the total number of visitors for the six-day period to 1.1 million.
Meanwhile, Japan has attracted the crowds with its combination of futuristic robotics and the natural curiosity one's neighbor attracts. In a similar vein, three Shanghai-based Buddhist monks told China Daily on Monday they had put South Korea, Japan and India at the top of their Expo shopping lists.
However, some local girls were more interested in faraway shores and romantic images of Europe, which may explain how France made the top-seven despite what many have said is an uninspiring metal latticework exterior.
"China, the UK and Switzerland are my top three must-sees," said Vivian Chow, 24, from Shanghai.
"I also heard the UK pavilion looks pretty inside at night."
While she was talking, her older sister took a phone call. "We're heading over to Puxi now to check out the industrial pavilions," Chow said.
"Our friend just told us it's not so crowded over there."
