Back from Shanghai: The "Meat Expo" and a Tragic Country
Translated from Chinese by Claude. Read the original
It’s been a day since I got back from the “Meat Expo” (as in, a World Expo packed with human flesh). I’m exhausted, really exhausted. I slept all day today and feel lousy. We took the bullet train there and the bullet train back. What I felt most at the World Expo was people, so damn many people. Not just a lot, an insane amount. I guess that’s China’s great strength!
I never used to think crowds were a bad thing, but now I really get it. This trip to the Expo really left a big impression on me. To hit its target of more than 70 million visits, the Chinese government quietly told government agencies and other work units to send groups, so the numbers would reach 70 million. Chinese people’s lack of manners, I really, really experienced it at the Expo: cutting in line, fighting over seats and so on~ Damn, what an embarrassment to the Chinese people. But, well, there weren’t many foreigners at the Meat Expo. It was mostly Chinese people, family, so no harm done……
A tragic country. A tragedy, a huge tragedy. Manners are something Chinese people absolutely have to improve. A great big country, with one ill-mannered person stacked on top of another, piling up one by one. To put it bluntly, it really is a tragedy. This country is divided into the “mainland” and the so-called Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. It’s a, holy crap~, a damn country of castes and ranks.
The day before yesterday a friend told me a story. He was eating at a restaurant in Paris, quietly enjoying his meal, when suddenly a big group of Chinese tourists showed up, and the quiet restaurant filled with the racket of drinking games. The waiter came over and asked him: “Are you people from Hong Kong?” My friend was mortified, because he knew what the waiter meant: mainlanders have no manners and don’t care about public decency, while people from Hong Kong are well-mannered……
Maybe this is exactly why China is split into the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan: those with manners and those without. Socialism is so advanced? That’s socialism with Chinese characteristics for you!
A tragic country, and we live inside the tragedy!
End of rant. Here are a few photos!
In front of the Oriental Pearl Tower:
The USA Pavilion, love it:
The North Korea Pavilion, very good, very powerful:
The Israel Pavilion, too crowded, didn’t go in:
Very hard for ordinary people to get into:
This Expo was a real failure. The length of the lines killed all the fun.
The theme of this Expo seems better suited to people in urban planning!
PS: The plugin will very likely be delayed until September. I’ve been busy preparing for the TOEFL lately……