ShangHai World Expo - Singapore & China Pavilion Part 1

I was lucky to get tickets for the ShangHai World Expo and naturally visits for the Singapore and China Pavilions would be a must. Well, the queue to get into the World Expo area was extremely long. Perhaps I was at the Asia Pavilions, and thus I didn't see many Westerners around. Most of the visitors were actually the Chinese from China.

The long queues took easily 1-2 hours, i.e. from the entrance till when the visitors could get to the pavilions. Well, once visitors get to the pavilions, they must queue again to get into individual pavilions. I heard that visitors to the Saudi Arabia Pavilion took as long as 8-9 hours to get into the exhibition area. Of course I didn't visit that. :)

Here's how the Singapore Pavilion looks like. The theme selected by the Singapore Tourism Board is Singapore Urban Symphony, and the concept is that the 'musical box' of Singapore will provide different 'musical experience' for the visitors. Hmm for some reason I can't see the 'musical box' in the shape of this cylindrical structure. Can you?

There was also a crowd at the Singapore Pavilion and again it took about 1-2 hours to get in. I heard from the volunteers at the Singapore Pavilion that up to 10,000 visitors visited the pavilion each day.

There were a number of interesting activities for the visitors, including using a small handheld screen to capture the different pictorial lights with pictures of Singapore. There was also a tambourine thingy where the visitors jumping on these devices will produce various musical notes. Of course, there was also the Orchid display and there were a number of interesting orchids being presented to the visitors.

The more interesting part of the visit is the 4 screen video of a song performed by 4 local singers, i.e. Singapore artists (Ado, JJ Lin, Stefanie Sun, Tanya Chua) titled "感動每一刻 (Every Touching Moment)".I wasn't that touched actually. Some shots, e.g. the teh tarik man at Arab Street area were too fast, while there was too much focus on the horticultural aspects.

Nope I don't have the video of that song to show since we can't take video shots in the theatre. Instead, let me share this 'back view' of the Singapore mascot, i.e. Liu Lian Xiao Xing (榴莲小星)! Of course the mascot must be the durian since that is the favourite fruit of Singaporeans. The fact that we built Esplanade in the shape of a durian already signifies the importance of the fruit to our national psyche, lolz.

Ok ok, that back view video of Liu Lian Xiao Xing is not interesting I know. So yes here's the 感動每一刻 YouTube video to compensate for the non-exciting Liu Lian clip. Enjoy!

On the way out from the Singapore Pavilion, I passed by the Malaysian Pavilion. Unfortunately I didn't have time to visit the pavilion of our neighbouring Malaysia, but here are two shots of the Malaysian Pavilion. I actually think that their structure is a better representation of their country, vis-a-vis this 'musical box' concept of Singapore.

So that ends the visit for the Singapore Pavilion portion of the ShangHai World Expo. I brought some souvenirs back home, including the Liu Lian Xiao Xing mascot items. I do think the head of the Liu Lian Xiao Xing is way larger than the body, but I guess all mascots are oddly proportioned.

Let me describe more of the ShangHai World Expo visit to the China Pavilion in Part 2!

See Related:
- ShangHai World Expo - Singapore & China Pavilions Part 2