Oh, to be in the middle of it all...

The Shanghai Expo, like communism and time shares, looks great on paper, but you don't want to actually experience it. OK, if you live in a city of less than one million, maybe the crowds, lines, and claustrophobia will dazzle your bumpkin brain. Ditto if you would suffer all for an interactive demo of Holland's cheese industry. For those of us living in China's big cities, or those of us who have been to enough arena concerts, the only thing that justifies dealing with a mob 400 thousand-deep is a paycheck, or a Pink Floyd reunion. It's always nice to know what's going on, though.

Seventy million visitors are expected over the Expo's six-month run, averaging 389,000 dutiful tourists per day, a number which will easily double on the weekends and holidays. That many visitors will shatter the standing expo record of sixty-four million at Osaka, in 1970.

Cost to China of Shanghai Expo: $55 billion. Discomfort of standing in 3-kilometer line for a port-o-potty: incalculable. Trumping Japan in an international event: priceless.

The Shanghai Expo is expected to reap profits of $11.6 billion, 3.5 times that earned by the Beijing Olympics. We know, Beijing, we know - Shanghai people are tricky, have more international business experience.

In sympathy for the straitened circumstances of many China expats, foreigners with a Shanghai resident card at least 6 months-old will get a free Expo ticket and a 200 RMB transit card. Rumors that a hot bowl of soup is waiting at the USA pavilion's charity kitchen have not been confirmed.

Predictably, some party-pooping western journo has tried to befoul the punch bowl by claiming the Shanghai Expo's mascot, Haibao, is a rip-off of classic clay psychonaut Gumby. Sheesh -as if. Who's got time to rip-off? He's a carbon copy of Xinxiang Haibao Electrical Appliance Company's logo! The company, by the way, couldn't be more thrilled with the free publicity.

As it turns out, the Shanghai Expo emblem, inspired by the Chinese character for "world",  is actually three humans, the family of man holding hands, if you will, not early hominids defending themselves against a savannah cobra.

More IP flap led to the cancelation of the Shanghai Expo song, "2010, Waiting for You," with many complaining that the tune was identical to the 1997 Japanese ballad, "Stay the Way You Are." Grumblers could not be swayed by the alchemic effect of Jackie "Endless Love" Chan singing it.

The Shanghai Expo has gone to great time and expense in order to reenforce global stereotypes. The Smiling Poland pavilion is a giant rhomboidal folk paper cut, designed, after dark, to project reality as seen through the eyes of a jolly, vodka-soaked potato farmer from Bydgoszcz.

Holland, renowned for the anything-goes fun to be had on certain thoroughfares, has scaled things down to a family-friendly model named Happy Street. Sustainable, orange, with a restaurant below mock sea-level, Happy Street has no barriers and multiple points of entry. Like Smiling Poland, Happy Street promises a night time "dreamland".

Saudi Arabia has spent $1.3 billion on the Expo's most expensive pavilion, just because it can. The "Moon Boat" is a floating island, propped up by a few skinny poles and a lot of petro power.

Boasting a theme of "Harmony Between Heart and Technology", Japan maintains its dominance in creepy-cute innovation by building a pavilion with antennae, designed to breathe like a living organism and modeled on the purple silkworm. Robotech fans, rejoice.

The United Nations continues to conspire to keep heads in the clouds, this time literally, with its Meteo World Pavilion, a white-membranous structure which will suck up untold volumes of China's precious water to turn into mist, creating a magical cloud illusion. Rainbows will appear at dawn and dusk, to complete the la-la land effect.

Then there are the eccentric exceptions: Spain, which decided to come disguised as a huge rattan basket, and England, embodied as a deadly steel dandelion puff.

Update: You will forgive, gentle reader, our jaded tone, and we will forgo saying "told you so", strong though the urge may be. The sheer volume of humanity in China ready to hurl itself at large-scale events makes them best witnessed from a distance, like twisters and volcanic eruptions.

 Australia had to close early on the opening weekend. One can imagine the dismay of the normally laid back Aussie pavilion-workers as a crowd the size of the combined populations of Melbourne, Perth, and Canberra charged into their tent like wombats crazed by cane-toad poison.

Even iron German will couldn't withstand the friendly invasion; Balancity had to shut down early as well.

Little wonder, then, if things feel less Woodstock than Altamont in these early days of the Expo.  

Now, nobody's saying don't go. Just don't go with a belly full of hype. Hope we've done our bit to help you digest it.