New Expo passports lift pavilion discrimination
- Source: Global Times
- [10:23 June 22 2010]
- Comments
A staffer at an officially licensed Expo store inside the Expo Park displays the new (left) and old (right) Expo passports Monday. Photo: Ni Dandan
By Ni Dandan
With a new model of the Expo passport hitting store shelves inside the Expo Park Tuesday, visitors rushed to buy whatever remaining copies of the original souvenir they could get their hands on Monday.
"It's now become a limited edition," Hou Tanghua, a visitor from Chongqing, told the Global Times Monday. "When something is rare, it becomes even more precious."
To all appearances that first meet the eye, the latest version of the passport is the same - except the designated pages set aside for popular country pavilions are missing.
Organizers decided to replace the 44 national pages with blank ones following complaints that the dedicated pages left some 100 other pavilion participants out of the fanfare.
The new passport will therefore allow visitors to collect stamps from smaller, less popularized countries, including Slovenia, or from the five theme pavilions, anywhere in the booklet as none of the pages are assigned to particular pavilions.
"The changes were made to bring more convenience to both visitors and pavilion staffers, who have had trouble putting the stamps in the right place," Cao Wei, a senior planner with Shanghai Dow Culture Media Company, the producer of the Expo passport, told the Global Times Monday.
Production of the original passports ceased last week, and it is expected that the officially licensed stores inside the park that still carry the product will sell out the old stock by this week, said Cao.
But whether visitors show up with an old or new passport in hand, the Spain Pavilion said that it will continue to honor its express entry passport policy. With the old passports, visitors showing a collection of three Spanish city pavilion stamps on page 37 were allowed to jump into the express queue.
"It doesn't matter that we don't have a designated page in the passport anymore," Yang Yue, spokesperson for the Spain Pavilion, told the Global Times Monday. "What matters is that visitors take the time to tour our cities inside the park to get the three stamps; if they do that, we will still let them through to the special line."
