Czech Pavilion celebrates 500,000 visitor milestone
- Source: Global Times
- [09:46 May 18 2010]
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Two youngsters at the Czech Pavilion use the "Children's Fantasy" exhibit to form the image of a pig. Photo: Ni Dandan
By Ni Dandan
The Czech Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai celebrated breaking the 500,000 visitor mark on its national pavilion day Tuesday with a grand parade attended by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
"We originally planned to receive around 30,000 visitors on a daily basis, but the real figures were 20 percent higher," said Pavel Antonin Stehlik, the pavilion's commissioner general.
A grand parade featuring performances by Czech acrobats drew even more attention to the pavilion Tuesday.
Joining the celebration, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Kouhout said he was impressed by the pavilion's popularity. "We're here to introduce our invention, creativity and sense of humor," he said.
Every day, around 60 visitors will be lucky enough to experience a fully-automatic machine that can produce perfume based on a person's emotions.
Users of the device put on a headphone-shaped sensor that will capture their emotions at that moment and then mix a bottle of personalized perfume.
Xu Xiantong, a member of the pavilion's staff, told the Global Times that the fragrance is a mix of three ingredients from a selection of over 100. The more cheerful a participant feels, the more fragrant their perfume will be. "We know of a visitor who was feeling gloomy, so his perfume smelled like sterile water," said Xu.
While adult visitors to the Czech Pavilion were drawn to the perfume device, most children were enthralled by an interactive image system called "Children's Fantasy".
"Children's imaginations are awakened when they use the system to create the image of an animal," said Kouhout, adding that it is his favorite part in the pavilion.
Given such popularity, Stehlik said Tuesday that they hope the Czech Pavilion could stay up after the Expo ends, and that negotiations over this are already underway.
