Change – the only constant, at least in China

It was indeed a remarkable way to conclude my first week in Shanghai that has been full of impressions and discoveries, in a tropical summer heat that my fifteen years in Sweden had not prepared me for, specially not the typhoon warning that closed down all the schools of the city on the first day of the school year (but we got no typhoon by the way).

The Swedish pavilion		Third attempt to get a Chinese mobile phone number

Most of these new impressions are indeed related not to how China is today as such, but how fast it seems to be changing. I guess it is also related to the gap there is between the European perception of China and what you find out once you get here. The pace of changes is not homogeneous; for instance there are 420 million Internet users and as far as I have been able to experience it is a very good Internet infrastructure, but the mobile coverage even in the center of Shanghai is not reliable. Another example that stroke me was the quality of the design and the huge variety of furniture we could see in a shopping mall versus the noisy merchandising display show for detergents in another shopping mall.

The World Expo site itself is of course very impressive because of the size of its area, the creativity exhibited by many countries in designing their pavilion as well as the number of visitors. Chinese people are clearly the primary target audience and it is a perfect occasion for them to take a trip around the world visiting what each country has decided to showcase and highlight. Personally I could only visit the Swedish pavilion and look forward to going back, with a special interest of course to visit the Eastern European countries' pavilions!