Overview

“Expo Shanghai 2010” took place in Shanghai, China, from May 1 to October 31, 2010. Organized by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, it was a registered Expo (International Registered Exhibition) under the International Exhibitions Bureau (Bureau International des Expositions, BIE), held under the theme “Better City, Better Life.” Its site covered 523 hectares, the largest in Expo history, and it recorded about 73 million visits, which the BIE describes as the highest attendance of any Expo.

Origins and the bid

China won the right to host on December 3, 2002, at the 132nd General Assembly of the BIE, held at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. After four rounds of voting, Shanghai defeated Yeosu, Republic of Korea, by 54 votes to 34; a Russian candidacy was also in the race. The Associated Press reported Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu’s reaction: “It’s an unforgettable day for China, Shanghai and developing countries.” The BIE General Assembly registered the Expo on December 1, 2005.

Theme and subthemes

The theme addressed the future of cities at a moment when urban growth was transforming China, and Shanghai itself counted an urban population of about 23 million. Participants were asked to present ideas for sustainable urban life, and the organizers applied those ideas to the Expo itself with rainwater collection, solar panels, electric buses and carts, and energy-saving air conditioning across a site planned as low-carbon.

The site

The site spread across both banks of the Huangpu River, on land once occupied by shipyards and factories. Existing industrial buildings were reused: the Nanshi Power Plant became a theme pavilion, and part of a former steel mill became a sculpture garden. Visitors moved between the two banks by shuttle bus, boat and metro. China spent 28.6 billion yuan (about $4.3 billion) on the Expo itself, according to the Associated Press, and many billions more on subways, airports and other public works; some residents were moved out of older housing to clear the Expo zone.

Pavilions and international participation

Participation reached 246 countries and international organizations, the highest number in Expo history, among them about 190 countries. Seventy-nine countries built their own pavilions, while others customized space within regional clusters. The China Pavilion, known as the “Oriental Crown,” was designed by He Jingtang and rises 69 meters. Denmark brought the Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, and its pavilion drew about 5.6 million visitors in six months. Israel displayed two pages of Albert Einstein’s original manuscript on the General Theory of Relativity, France presented 20 synchronized Nao robots, and Spain’s pavilion featured Miguelín, a 6.5-meter animated baby.

Corporate pavilions revived display techniques with a long history. Architectural historian Lisa D. Schrenk describes the SAIC-GM Pavilion, designed by Chinese architect Rong Wujie, as a crowd favorite. Its spiraling facade of recycled aluminum symbolized the road to the future, and its main feature, the 4-D film “2030, Xing!,” imagined driving free of petroleum, congestion and crashes. At the end the screens disappeared to reveal acrobats and General Motors concept cars, although, unlike at many earlier Expos, there was no test track, and Ford, GM’s old rival in Expo display, was absent. According to anthropologist Scott A. Lukas, Bob Rogers of BRC Imagination Arts, which worked on the USA Pavilion, held that his firm’s storytelling applied equally to theme parks and Expos.

Mexico took an unusual approach. Instead of a large building, its pavilion offered a “Kite Forest” at ground level, a lawn crossed by huge multicolored metal kites on tall poles, which the organizers said embodied ecology, environmental protection and peace. Below ground, a white gallery held some 30 faces and heads on thin poles, among them the mask of the Dance of the Old Men from the island of Jarácuaro in Lake Pátzcuaro, ritual masks, figures ranging from a miner to a punk, and a miniature Olmec head. Visitors placed their faces inside the masks to watch video of Mexican treasures. Other displays included Maya stone objects, a gilded colonial altarpiece, a painting by Frida Kahlo, a clay tree of life and alebrijes, and Mexico sold a 15-day tour package on Aztec and Maya culture.

Performance scholar Ruth Hellier-Tinoco reads the display as the latest stage of a long history. Since 1923, she notes, the Dance of the Old Men had been turned from a village festivity into a national and tourist icon, and in 2006 its mask held the central place in the Mexican Tourist Board’s European poster campaign. In the Shanghai gallery, cut off from the brown-skinned P’urhépecha dancer who normally wears it, the mask became a face with no original face behind it. In her reading, the Indigenous body was erased while the icon of economic value remained.

A major innovation was the Urban Best Practices Area, where cities from around the world presented 80 working solutions to urban problems. The BIE regards Expo 2000 Hannover’s Global House as its precursor, and a best practices area has featured at later Expos.

Visitors and services

Attendance surpassed the roughly 64 million visits of Expo 1970 Osaka. The busiest day, October 16, 2010, brought 1.03 million visitors, and many people waited hours in the summer heat to enter the most popular pavilions. At the closing, Premier Wen Jiabao called the Expo a “splendid event,” and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “The Shanghai Expo will close soon but it will not be forgotten.”

The crowds also had to eat. Historian Van Troi Tran, who did fieldwork at the Expo, notes that picnickers, eating anything from home-packed food to KFC chicken nuggets, sheltered from the July sun and the October rains in the covered zones beneath the elevated walkways, under the umbrellas typical of Shanghai. Small multicolored folding stools became one of the summer’s most popular purchases. Food was also a security matter. Airport-style X-ray checks at the gates kept out cooked food, cakes and boxed meals, which officials said spoiled easily in the heat, while dry food such as bread, biscuits and unpeeled fruit and vegetables was allowed. Tran links these strict controls to the authorities’ wish to avoid any repeat of the milk contamination scandal of 2008.

Mascot, logo and media

The mascot, Haibao (“Treasure of the Sea”), was created by Wu Yong Jian, with a shape inspired by the Chinese character for “person.”

Legacy

Architectural historians Gaia Caramellino, Alessandro De Magistris and Federico Deambrosis see the Expo as evidence that the Expo tradition was thriving in new regions of growth even as European ambitions shrank. Backed by a huge domestic market and planned in the wake of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it was designed for 70 million visitors and woven into the transformation of the whole metropolis. Obsolete factories, shipyards and the large Baosteel steel mill were moved to the periphery, six new subway lines were built, and Pudong International Airport was expanded to triple its capacity, to about 64 million passengers a year. Paradoxically, the authors write, its success celebrated an instrument deeply rooted in the urban culture of the 19th century.

Shanghai also drew on Expo 1998 Lisbon. Urban design scholar Patricia Simões Aelbrecht writes that the organizers sought advice from Parque Expo, that Expo’s development company, from the start of the candidacy and visited Lisbon several times. Like Lisbon, Shanghai planned with after-use and permanence in mind, in a “two in one” plan that both staged the Expo and carried out the city’s master plan, reviving two post-industrial riverbanks in the inner city and providing cultural facilities for later use. Unlike Lisbon, it included no housing, a choice officials justified by the master plan’s cultural focus. Aelbrecht considers Shanghai the Expo that followed the Lisbon model most closely.

The Expo’s intellectual legacy is unusually durable. On October 31, 2010, participants issued the Shanghai Declaration, which set out a road map for sustainable urban development and proposed a World Cities Day. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the day, and it has been celebrated every October 31 since 2014, with Shanghai hosting the first edition. The United Nations, China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Shanghai Municipal Government and the BIE also compiled the “Shanghai Manual,” a practical guide to sustainable urban development, with a second edition in 2016.

The Expo also reshaped Shanghai. The city gained a new runway and terminal at Hongqiao Airport, a high-speed rail link to Hangzhou, what was then the world’s longest metro system and a redeveloped Bund promenade. On the former site, the China Pavilion reopened as the China Art Museum, the power plant became the Power Station of Art, the Expo Cultural Centre became the Mercedes-Benz Arena, and the Expo Museum opened in May 2017. With record attendance, record participation and a lasting agenda for cities, Expo 2010 Shanghai set a scale that remains a reference point in Expo history.