Quick updates on what's happened since my last blog post:
The Expo hit a record high of 1 million visitors on Saturday, October 16. Check out the sudden spike on the graph.
http://en.expo2010.cn/yqkl/index.htm
Volunteered at an orphanage dedicated to cleft lip and palate babies today. It was a sobering and rewarding experience. Shanghai Healing Home, link below.
http://jamieweidner.squarespace.com/
Friend from home Henry is currently in town visiting. I am now using him to translate bits and pieces of Shanghai-nese I hear but cannot understand. Friend I met in Taiwan last year Sam also visited recently. It's always nice to see familiar faces.
Between collecting data at the Shanghai Library, planning my trip to Thailand, and thinking about how I already miss Shanghai, I wonder about the identity of this city post-Expo. Shanghai has been enmeshed in Expo-ness, figuratively and literally. How odd will it be for the average Shanghai-nese to see Haibao in every corner of your life--on the subway, in the alley you live, as a nicely shaped shrub around the city--on a daily basis one day, and have him be gone, erased, wiped out the next? The government gets things done quickly--pushing forth the retirement of Haibao and associated propaganda will probably not be an exception. And then the larger philosophical question: what happens to Shanghai post-Expo? The city has centered around planning and executing this tremendous event for years now, and now that it's coming to a close I feel like it's almost inevitable that the city remakes itself or goes through an identity crisis. Maybe I've gone a little too "native"; after all, a good part of the world doesn't care for or experience any impact of the Expo on their own lives. But Shanghai, revolving around Better City, Better Life, will now become ____________. Talk about a serious mad libs game.
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