Travelogue, day two
My first thought getting up in the morning - after the initial electric shock of oh right China - was that committing to the writing of a travelogue turns all your thoughts into a travelogue narration. Essentially, the purpose of words is to communicate. Without a receiver, the mind pings the void: it latches onto an audience and grows into it like a seed in a half-darkened box.
So, regarding the Expo. Listen well, children, for we will now learn a life lesson. The lesson is that when an event of any importance takes place in China, it will inevitably be like China itself: that is to say big and crowded. The lines snake into a sweaty but stunningly organized infinity, curling on themselves in ludicrous loops and knots. No amount of describing the multitudes will do what I'm going to do now: which is to tell you that by 19:45 Shanghai time, 6.8 million people have visited the Expo. Today. Imagine, if you will, all of Israel in a space some six square kilometers across. Now make them stand in lines. Now find a bunker to hide in.
The Israel pavilion - my first stop, following rumors of free VIP tickets handed out at random out of the kindness of our Jewish hearts - is quite nifty on the outside, alternatively hilarious and depressing on the inside. Alongside some nattering about Einstein and the Dead Sea, its only feature is an admittedly splendidly made feature about Israeli technological innovations, like the laptop, the disc-on-key and solar power. If you knew Israel was a solar power empire, you should have told me sooner. It's rather refreshing to step into anything at all related to Israel that is not All About the Jewish Miracle and does not feature politics and weeping violins, but I suppose the Chinese just don't give a damn about any of that. And more power to them, I say.
I've spent the majority of the day wandering the Near East one corner of the Asia zone in a state that can only be called visual intoxication, zigzagging between pavilions. Some of them are decorated boxes, but others - those you'd least expect, really - are marvels of exterior and interior design. The UAE pavilion boasts a glorious design like frozen sand dunes, all covered in gold, though the impression is somewhat ruined by its being surrounded by gold-plated life-sized plastic camels. The Kyrgyizstan and Tajikistan pavilions both stand out with their lavish but sincere decor. The Iranian pavilion also stands out: President Whackjob does his darnest to spoil the beautiful impression left by the scenic photographs and technological innovations on display with a so-sad-it's-funny address filled with buzzwords, but no one in the crowd seemed to as much as pause to skim over it.
But the day was, for all intents, only a prelude. During the day, the Expo is fun, an amusement park of enormous proportions. But once the sun goes down, it transforms, lighting up into a an unspeakably glorious fantasy land, too rich and strange for even the hungriest eye to devour. Words cannot describe the China pavilion by night: it seems to defy all sense of reality, as though its builders and designers plucked it straightaway from their fever dreams without as much as a by-your-leave from poor befuddled old physics. Dominating the landscape, it lands its majesty to even the most tacky display of neon lights. Behind it, the cityscape is lit by a dozen skylights, pale white beams stretching out into the autumn cloud cover. Together they look as though they're summoning something from up there, something big.
There is a central walkway crossing the Expo: it's roughly as wide as Ayalon North, and you cannot walk three feet without running into someone. Its supports are crowned by enormous funnels made of a pixelated neon texture. They glow red, blue, green. If you could freeze and solidify fireworks, you'd get something like that. When you stand under them and look left and right, and realize the scale of the place and its colorful brilliance, the mind stops trying to analyze what it sees: a moment of unmediated experience.
Have I mentioned how I've barely scratched the surface? There are 191 pavilions. I've seen thirteen.
Contrary to my expectations, about 99.999-and-so-on-and-so-forth percents of Expo visitors are Chinese. Seeing any other non-Chinese faces in the crowd, no matter their apparent origin, becomes a cause for a minor celebration. There's nothing like the feeling of being a foreigner - the feeling of alienness in China. Worst of all, I think, is the experience of renewed illiteracy: you see something that you know to be writing, but that knowledge does nothing but to frustrate you. Because many of the signs are variations on themselves, coming to safely recognize even a single character is a chore that you can never be quite certain is complete. I come to feel not annoyed at the people around me who don't speak English, but embarrassed that I cannot speak Chinese. They are not strange: I am strange, they are one-fifth of the world.
Passed by a gaming shop on the way to the subway today, which is to say a shop where people sit at computers and game. Something like a Korean death trap. Discovered that my cellphone can act as a recorder: stood for ten minutes under a random bridge and talked into it, stringing along endless sentences and leaving commas scattered in my wake. Lunch was the worst chow mein I've ever had: its only merit was in ruining my appetite. A few hours later, I bought a hot dog without knowing what it was made of - could literally be anything - and biting into it, discovered it was sweet. Really, there's nothing more to say.
Somewhere in the middle of the neverending noise
There is a pulse, a steady rhythm of a heart that beats
And a million voices blend into a single voice
And you can hear it in the clamor of the crowded streets