Scott Gabriel Knowles: Phantom of the Shanghai World's Fair
[Scott Gabriel Knowles is an assistant professor of history at Drexel University and director of Drexel's Great Works Symposium.]
If Shanghai isn’t really China (as I was repeatedly told by Shanghainese), and the Expo isn’t really Shanghai (in but not of the metropolis, they also insisted), then I really have no clue where I spent 10 days last month. I ate Swiss fondue, bought a Kyrgyz felt hat, and had my passport stamped “Trinidad” by a young Chinese woman who never looked up from her text messaging. It was thrilling to visit North Korea and pretend the guard watching me was compiling a surveillance report on “the American with straw hat and a digital camera.” I think he really was. The replica of the Trojan Horse was undeniably creepy, hovering in the ominous blue light of a well-sacked mock-Troy. There was a parade every night and lines all day and the staff drilled and marched in military display. I was encouraged to consider the universality of 21st-century urban life by wax figure families from six different cities around the world. Disoriented and sweaty, I walked from one end to the other and back on this two-square-mile microplanet. Making sense of it all was impossible. All I really wanted to find out, in true world’s fair tradition, is if the future is going to be more interesting than the present....
As I moved through the African Pavilion just before closing time, it occurred to me at last that I was merely a phantom at this fair. It’s a strange moment for an American abroad — and when it happens you wince and surrender your non-existent birthright: the realization that this is not all here to entertain me. In fact, though, all world’s fairs up to this one have in one way or another been there to entertain westerners, even Osaka. With Chinese nationals making up the overwhelming majority of the visitors to Expo 2010, though, I was really witnessing the creation of Chinese elites packaged and presented to the Chinese masses, a tour of the world as the elites want China to see itself, and as participating countries want to be seen by the Chinese.
This explains why the U.S. Pavilion — with its suburban corporate architecture, cowboy hats and basketballs for sale — is focused on bland ideas like teamwork and the victory of the little guy, with no mention of democracy. Certainly if more Americans or Europeans had been expected in the audience it would be unacceptable to show a feel-good film with a Chevron executive lecturing the world on environmental sustainability. This also explains why pavilions from Venezuela to Mozambique to Uzbekistan featured huge portraits of the nation’s leader smiling and shaking hands with Hu Jintao. This explains the appeal of the startlingly large globe over which you stand in the Urban Planet Pavilion. As a latter-day John Glenn (or 21st-century Chinese astronaut?) you orbit and watch helplessly as the blue planet turns brown and withers before your eyes. Global warming is real in Expo, it must be confronted, and China will be part of the solution. Chinese carbon emissions are not much up for discussion. Neither are U.S. carbon emissions, or Australian carbon emissions for that matter. That is impolite and definitely bad business. Instead, the focus in Expo’s version of contemporary history is a world with its hands open to China in gestures of friendship and free trade. The troubles of the world are the troubles of China, and the way forward cruises effortlessly through the Chinese city in the sustainable car of the future. This nifty little car, by the way, is on display at the hugely popular General Motors/SAIC (State Administration for Industry and Commerce) Pavilion; performers in colorful future-driving-suits sing and dance around them while you gaze....
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If Shanghai isn’t really China (as I was repeatedly told by Shanghainese), and the Expo isn’t really Shanghai (in but not of the metropolis, they also insisted), then I really have no clue where I spent 10 days last month. I ate Swiss fondue, bought a Kyrgyz felt hat, and had my passport stamped “Trinidad” by a young Chinese woman who never looked up from her text messaging. It was thrilling to visit North Korea and pretend the guard watching me was compiling a surveillance report on “the American with straw hat and a digital camera.” I think he really was. The replica of the Trojan Horse was undeniably creepy, hovering in the ominous blue light of a well-sacked mock-Troy. There was a parade every night and lines all day and the staff drilled and marched in military display. I was encouraged to consider the universality of 21st-century urban life by wax figure families from six different cities around the world. Disoriented and sweaty, I walked from one end to the other and back on this two-square-mile microplanet. Making sense of it all was impossible. All I really wanted to find out, in true world’s fair tradition, is if the future is going to be more interesting than the present....
As I moved through the African Pavilion just before closing time, it occurred to me at last that I was merely a phantom at this fair. It’s a strange moment for an American abroad — and when it happens you wince and surrender your non-existent birthright: the realization that this is not all here to entertain me. In fact, though, all world’s fairs up to this one have in one way or another been there to entertain westerners, even Osaka. With Chinese nationals making up the overwhelming majority of the visitors to Expo 2010, though, I was really witnessing the creation of Chinese elites packaged and presented to the Chinese masses, a tour of the world as the elites want China to see itself, and as participating countries want to be seen by the Chinese.
This explains why the U.S. Pavilion — with its suburban corporate architecture, cowboy hats and basketballs for sale — is focused on bland ideas like teamwork and the victory of the little guy, with no mention of democracy. Certainly if more Americans or Europeans had been expected in the audience it would be unacceptable to show a feel-good film with a Chevron executive lecturing the world on environmental sustainability. This also explains why pavilions from Venezuela to Mozambique to Uzbekistan featured huge portraits of the nation’s leader smiling and shaking hands with Hu Jintao. This explains the appeal of the startlingly large globe over which you stand in the Urban Planet Pavilion. As a latter-day John Glenn (or 21st-century Chinese astronaut?) you orbit and watch helplessly as the blue planet turns brown and withers before your eyes. Global warming is real in Expo, it must be confronted, and China will be part of the solution. Chinese carbon emissions are not much up for discussion. Neither are U.S. carbon emissions, or Australian carbon emissions for that matter. That is impolite and definitely bad business. Instead, the focus in Expo’s version of contemporary history is a world with its hands open to China in gestures of friendship and free trade. The troubles of the world are the troubles of China, and the way forward cruises effortlessly through the Chinese city in the sustainable car of the future. This nifty little car, by the way, is on display at the hugely popular General Motors/SAIC (State Administration for Industry and Commerce) Pavilion; performers in colorful future-driving-suits sing and dance around them while you gaze....