Rumors clarified by organizers, Czechs
- Source: Global Times
- [08:59 May 20 2010]
- Comments
By Ni Dandan
Organizers of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai and officials from the Czech Pavilion Wednesday dismissed rumors that a disorderly show may force the structure running under the banner "Fruits of Civilization" to close this month.
The story caught media attention after the expatriate website Shanghaiist on Tuesday posted an e-mail reportedly leaked to the locally based media company, claiming to have been written to organizers by Pavel Antonín Stehlík, commissioner-general of the Czech Pavilion.
The letter highlighted difficulties encountered by the pavilion in obtaining proper visas for the majority of its foreign staff, urgently requesting help from organizers in getting the documents needed to legally allow them to work in the country - to ensure that operations would not have to shut down.
The Czech Pavilion Wednesday confirmed to the Global Times that Stehlík had written the note listing frustrations some time ago, but that visa troubles had been solved before the leak occurred.
"We no longer have visa issues with our expat staff," said a senior Czech official of the pavilion who refused to disclose his identity. "Our pavilion has been received well by the public and our operations have been going smoothly - there is definitely no way that we will be closing."
Though the official declined to go into further detail regarding the incident, he said that the letter was never meant to be released to the public.
According to the Shanghai World Expo Coordination Bureau, the e-mail was submitted to the Steering Committee, a department in charge of the coordination between pavilions and organizers, sometime around May 1.
"That was after the six trial runs that we did," Hong Hao, director general of Shanghai World Expo Coordination Bureau, Wednesday told reporters at a press conference. "So far, all their complaints regarding queues and logistics, among others, have been fundamentally addressed."
Hong added that the bureau had not received any similar complaints from other pavilions.
On Monday, a day before the leak, the Czechs celebrated their national pavilion day at the Expo Park, when Stehlík said that over 500,000 visitors had come through their doors, surpassing expectations by some 20 percent, adding that negotiations were underway to see whether its pavilion may stay after the event ends.
With the unfolding of events Wednesday painting a starkly different picture than the one first illustrated through the leaked letter, news of the rumor has spread quickly in the past couple of days, proving a popular subject for online forums including tianya.cn and the mi-croblogging section of sina. com.cn.
Yet some readers like Li Jun said that they are not so easily fooled by the frenzy of news being published daily about the May to October party.
"I just read online that besides Citigroup Hai'er Group provided the rest of the funding for the USA Pavilion," said the 31-year-old white-collar worker Wednesday. "Then I read some papers saying that GE and P&G had also contributed."
Citigroup and Hai'er Group are, with GE and P&G, among the over 30 supporters.
Similarly, local social networking sites and forums circulated a post on Monday, saying that a Shanghai taxi driver was beaten to death by a drunken passenger early that morning.
When the Global Times called to confirm the case, Shanghai Qiangsheng Taxi Company, which employed the driver, said that the incident had in fact occurred, but over four years ago.
Last month the Shanghaiist initially reported that expats would be under an 11 pm curfew during the six-month show after a reporter received a tip from her friend.
The Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security soon after set the record straight, saying the report was groundless.
Shanghai-based independent Internet critic Zhou Gang said that online readers should exercise their own judgment when it comes to consuming information distributed over the World Wide Web, given that what is out there can be false or inaccurate.
"Words often get quoted out of context as seen in the case of the Czech Pavilion," he said.
