deception |diˈsep sh ən|- to believe something that is not true, typically in order to gain some personal advantage, give a mistaken impression
I arrived for the 1st time to Shanghai in August 2009. I can remember looking out the window as the airplane approached the city. The sea was turning from blue to murky gray then finally just brown. As our driver raced into the city, the highway was surrounded by decrepit stone houses where communities of people lived, socialized and worked. Upon entering the city I recall a conversation about Shanghai hosting the 2010 World Expo (World Fair). At the time I was clueless what this meant, but within a few months I couldn’t escape the preparation for this event. Till days before the Expo opened, May 1, 2010, the city was under massive repairs, construction, and landscaping. Roads were being tore up left and right, several new subway lines were being created, scenery walls were being put up to hide the poor neighborhoods, and all those stone houses along the highway and the Expo site, were being town down. In a city with the population of over 19 million, there is no shortage of workers, and within just a short time things drastically changed.
I watched this incredible transformation and just a few days prior to opening day of the World Expo, May 1st, the city switched. Pollution cleared up, ALL construction stopped, taxi and bus drivers were dressed in uniforms and suits, street vendors and beggars disappeared. I would occasionally pick up the Shanghai Daily, the English paper of Shanghai, and read about new laws being put in place about peeing on the public sidewalks and streets and wearing your pajamas outside of you home, which seems to be a style for the Shanghainese.
Most of my time here has been under these conditions, which have been quite a lovely experience. Now it’s winter in Shanghai. Oh the grueling wet, cold winter of Shanghai. The Expo is over and the factories are back to running on coal. With brown smog in the air and the almost unheard of consistent fall of snow, I have been thinking more about global warming at it’s worst. This country is growing so fast with little regard to the damage it is having on the world, let alone the people who live here. I find it rather unfortunate that China would spend billions of billions of dollars to put on a show for the rest of the world, but as soon as the show is over everyone goes back to it’s old ways, taking very little away from the environmental theme of the Expo. “Better City, Better Life (Expo 1010 motto)”?
