Close your eyes (but not before you finish reading this), and picture the Epcot Center. Now try to imagine all the steroids from all the major league sports and pro wrestling in one large syringe. Imagine that syringe being stuck directly into Spaceship Earth, that giant testicle that is the centerpiece of Epcot. After a couple weeks at God’s gym and several million gallons of protein shakes, you would have the Shanghai Expo.

Having some time to kill on a random weekend, I thought I’d see this pumped up beefcake and if it could point me in the direction of the beach.

Taking advice from some other people who clearly know better than me, I visited on a Sunday afternoon, which is supposedly the least crazy time. Indeed, buying tickets was fast and straightforward, and the line through the security theatre moved at brisk pace not unlike a Chinese airport. What was crazy however, was the guy we spotted not long after arriving, who was contemplating jumping off one of the pavilions.

We got bored of watching the drama (or lack thereof) and since time was of the essence we checked out a few pavilions.

All of the pavilions fall into one of three formulas:

1) A giant gift shop selling things that may or may not be related to the pavilion’s country.

2) A several hour wait, followed by 15 minutes of videos about the pavilion’s country’s environment/culture/future/relationship with China projected in an artsy way (ie. on the walls, floors, inflatable animals hanging from the ceiling, giant and horrifying animatronic babies)

3) Megapavilions containing dozens of minipavilions with minilines forming to get coveted novelty passport stamps.

Even the best of the pavilions only rivaled a good art gallery. They would get bitch slapped good and proper by any quality museum. I should mention that almost any big pavilion required a multi-hour wait to get into. We had the connections however, so there were no lines for us. Being a smug bastard, I couldn’t help but wonder who wants to wait in line for hours just to see a weak art show? Then it dawned upon me as I walked by them. Millions of Chinese people, that’s who. So the architecture was neat, and I suppose that was worth seeing in person, but at the end of the day none of the designs are practical for anything but showing off. So again another question was boggling my noodle, is this all just a global penis jousting match?

Other than the dude who was going to try and swan dive into the pavement, there was two things the expo had going for it. The first was all the different shapes and textures that you could catch as part of the pavilions. The second infinite masses of provincials that inundated the place. I’ll talk about them later, for now, pretty pictures:

Filed under: just photos