8 hours at the world’s largest demolition site, a.k.a. the former Shanghai Expo 2010

[Update 19/11/10: Thanks to Shanghaiist and Shanghai Scrap for linking to this post. Nice to know that other Expo obsessed/interested people still exist.]

Expo 2010 has ended, they say. The story that began with a winning bid eight years ago has finally come to a close with the most expensive, best-attended Expo ever. Hey, Expo aficionados, we hear. Accept that it’s over and move on already.

I think I speak for more than one Expo fan when I say: No way! Expo talk is far from dead — more fun has begun now that the vast 5.28 km² former Expo grounds in Pudong and Puxi have become the world’s largest demolition site. Except for a few permanent structures like the China Pavilion, International Exhibitions Bureau regulations state that everything must be demolished, or dismantled and moved elsewhere. Participants that aren’t bringing their pavilions home have been trying to get rid of them; apparently, my spray-painted Malaysia Pavilion might go to either Hebei, Wuxi, or Guangdong. Since they all have to go, it’s one giant sanctioned wrecking party.

Thanks to a close friend on site, it’s a party I’m not missing out on. Today, he invited me down to the ex-Expo to spend as much time as I liked looking around, as “the site is pretty much open 24 hours — you can sleep here if you want.” He doubted I’d stay long since “there’s not much happening yet” in terms of demolition, and that “pavilions are still sorting things out before the structures really come down.” He thought I’d spend two hours poking around. I ended up staying for eight.

I know many people who couldn’t find ways to spend eight hours at the Expo during its bustling summer months, so it might seem amazing/ludicrous that I could spend eight hours in what is essentially a ghost town. To give you an idea of what I did and what is going on down there, I outline my entire visit below, hour by hour, with an avalanche of photos:

11:00 a.m.  – The interior of a dismantled pavilion

My friend met me at Gate 7 (Changqing Lu), and within minutes, I was in. There was little security compared to my pre-Expo visit in April. While official permission is certainly required (my visit was signed off by a few supervisors and nameless bosses), there were no security/bag checks — my friend handed over my permission slip, and we strutted through the gate. “Today’s the first day that they’re not bothering with X-rays and metal detectors,” he told me. “I guess since they’re demolishing everything anyway, they’re not worried about what you bring in.”

We walked through the eastern part of what was Zone C, to the Europe Joint Pavilions. Workers were busy dragging out torn-out wall panels.

We went around the building, and entered my friend’s current workplace from the back door. He took me through the office, and into what was once the main hall of the Cyprus Pavilion.

He also brought me up to the VIP room. It was my first personal invitation to a pavilion’s VIP room. I felt honored. Really. They still had fancy drinks at the bar.

Items belonging to Cyprus — the merchandise they had for sale in their pavilion, for example — had been packed away; everything else — tables, chairs, steel frames, glass panes — belonged to my friend’s company, the local contractor. I asked when he would start the “real” dismantling, meaning taking out the entire interior, including the steel skeleton, and restoring the rented space to what it had originally been. “When we get the go ahead from Expo authorities,” he said. “Right now, we don’t even have permission to take the thing apart. It could be that the authorities pay us a fee for the materials, and we leave the actual dismantling and recycling to them.”

After the jump, the other seven hours spent at the former Expo:

12:00 p.m. — Passport stampers and a ghostly Africa Joint Pavilion

My friend had scheduled a meeting with colleagues at the Africa Joint Pavilion, so we made our way over. While he was busy, I wandered around the office, bored, until a very familiar ker-plunk! caught my ear. I followed that sound until I found heaven: a desk littered with Expo passport stamps, and workers happily stamping passports that I had never seen before.

According to one worker, these were special commemorative Africa Pavilion passports, and they were stamping them as gifts for “honored participants.” I refrained from asking whether I could buy one.

Tearing me away from the passport stamping desk, my friend and his colleague took me down to the eerily quiet Africa Pavilion exhibition hall. The once-bustling bazaar had been completely cleared out; the merchandise that had been on display in each pavilion, from miniature wooden giraffes to life-sized statues, was also gone. However, everything else remained; the individual pavilion structures themselves, the furniture. I asked why nothing had been dismantled yet. “We’re still sorting through paperwork,” said a pavilion employee. “We’re not in a hurry anyway; all this belongs to China, not Africa.”

1:00 p.m. — Searching for food at a food-less former Expo site

If you head down here, please remember to bring your own food and drink. I’d forgotten that restaurants and stores no longer operate, and hadn’t brought lunch. The only food outlets on site are staff canteens, which I didn’t have access to. My forgetful host didn’t bring any food either. By 1, we were starving. We found a pack of frozen veggies on the ground, and a rotten pumpkin. We were almost desperate enough to try them.

Thankfully, my friend remembered that an enterprising fellow had set up a boxed lunch stall outside Gate 7 of the Expo, and set off to get us food. This lunch man seemed like a big hit; I saw numerous workers gathered together eating the same lunch sets. At RMB 10 per set, it definitely wasn’t at Expo prices. This might have been the best meal I have ever had at the Expo site.

2:00 p.m. — Orderly scrap; the Chinese take back the Expo site!

During the Expo’s summer months, crowds gathered under the elevated walkways to seek relief from the sun. After the Expo, different sorts of crowds have formed underneath these walkways.

A group of young Chinese men wearing “participant” Expo passes walked by while I was photographing the above. They were in high spirits, laughing, sauntering as if they owned the site. Eavesdropping, I realized this is exactly how they felt: “All the foreign staff are gone, this is our Expo now!” one of them shouted, cheered on by the others. I looked at my friend, who was smiling, agreeing. I remembered his complaints months earlier about how some foreign clients treated their local employees, the disparate working conditions for local versus foreign staff. Though sympathizing with my friend and those like him, it bothered me to think that even inter-cultural staff at a World Expo that, at its very core, promotes international understanding, clashed until the very end. “The foreigners are gone, it’s ours now!”

3:00 p.m. — Australia’s iron ore; unusable washrooms

I kept my eyes open for interesting souvenirs, but I didn’t expect to bring home two small pieces of iron ore. I didn’t know what those lumps were until my friend pointed to the rocks littered around the Australia Pavilion and said, “Look, iron ore.” A large number of metal drums sat around the pavilion, presumably to transport all that iron ore. Probably not back to Australia, since they “have a heck of a lot of it.”

You know what the Expo site doesn’t have a heck of a lot of right now? Functioning toilets.

4:00 p.m. — NORTH KOREA HAS DISAPPEARED!

After five hours wandering around the site, I had to admit that I was disappointed. The Expo was over, I complained to my friend. So far, I had mostly seen piles of scrap metal, a few uprooted benches, some beaten walls. I wanted to see actual demolition. At the very least, I wanted to see a pavilion so stripped that it was unidentifiable.

And then I came upon this:

No signage, no trimmings, nothing. Just the bare bones. I knew which pavilion it was, simply because I had been there many times; my friend, on the other hand, had no idea until I told him. A ‘before’ shot of the pavilion, taken in April this year:

North Korea really knows how to strip a pavilion bare. As far as I could tell, it is the only country that chose not to linger at the Expo.

More after-before photos below:

5:00 p.m. — South Korea, still there, lots of trash

While North Korea can just get up and leave, South Korea’s sheer size and complexity make it difficult to disappear so quickly. I’m talking in terms of pavilion, of course. At the moment, its demolition has generated the greatest rubbish heaps.

The showcase ground floor of the pavilion remains largely intact. The South Korea Pavilion is one I regret not visiting, thus the lengthy amount of time spent wandering around it today, trying to pry out one of the cleaner spongey floorboards for a souvenir.

6:00 p.m. — They’re building the Great Wall of Expo

Demolition aside, I think the most significant change at the site is the construction of a Great Wall of Expo, of sorts. Namely, a wall is quickly going up, one that separates the China Pavilion, the Expo Axis, and the Theme Pavilion from the rest of the ex-Expo. I didn’t give the wall much thought when I was passing from Zone B into Zone A:

However, I couldn’t miss the wall when I tried crossing back to the China Pavilion from the rest of Zone A:

We puzzled over the wall for a while. “Do they need to construct something before they start demolishing?” I asked. “It’s China,” said my friend, who’s Chinese. “If they’re building a wall, it’s to hide something behind it.” I realized it’s no coincidence that the wall is separating the permanent structures from those slated to be demolished; with the China Pavilion re-opening to the public on December 1, organizers are prepping the space, and constructing a necessary barrier between the small re-opened site and the dirty, dusty demolition going around around it. In that case, that wall probably isn’t high enough.

7:00 p.m. — Macau bunny’s lost its head; goodbye, ex-Expo site

I returned to my friend’s office, then sat there shivering. He looked apologetic. “These pavilions weren’t built for winter,” he said. “No heating, no insulation.” I decided I’d had enough post-Expo tourism.

I passed by the China Pavilion again on the way out, and noted the Hong Kong and Macau Pavilions, which need to be taken apart as quickly as the wall goes up, for the China Pavilion’s re-opening.

Something bothered me about Macau, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on it. Only after I left the site did I realize the Macau bunny was missing its head.

I guess “off with its head” is as good a place to start as any, when you’re taking something apart.

I had no problems leaving the Expo, but others weren’t so lucky — those suspected of smuggling scrap out of the Expo were stopped, their contraband goods seized, mostly circuit boards. Even if I were checked, I doubt my loot — tiny pieces of iron ore from the Australia Pavilion, and pieces of cork from the exterior of the Portugal Pavilion (which someone else had already gouged out) — would have raised any eyebrows.

(I had no way of getting to the Puxi site, thus the Pudong-centric visit.)