Expo empties out in recent days
- Source: Global Times
- [08:25 September 02 2010]
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As heavy rain starts to downpour Wednesday, a lone man carrying an umbrella hesitates before stepping on to the elevated pathway on the Pudong New Area side of the Expo Park. Photo: Ni Dandan
By Ni Dandan
While the number of visitors at the Expo Park dropping to the lowest in three months at 181,700 Wednesday, the poor turnout hardly made a dent on the lengthy queues that kept people waiting hours to get into pavilions.
Even heavy winds and rainstorms courtesy of typhoon Kompasu, which was originally predicted to brush past the city before it missed completely and continued north Wednesday, were not enough to deter visitors dressed in parkas from waiting at the Oil Pavilion that features a 4-D film created by the producers of box-office hit Avatar.
"Even in the gloomy weather, visitors are waiting about six hours to get in," Gao Huize, a media coordinator at the Oil Pavilion, told the Global Times Wednesday.
Although Expo organizers previously predicted September and October, the last two months of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai to be the busiest, crowds have dwindled from 500,000-plus visitors to some 200,000 visitors since the weekend - when the onset of the new school semester and typhoon forecasts were on the horizon.
The Spain Pavilion is among the pavilions that have noticed the change with only some 28,000 visitors turning up on Tuesday, much lower than previous daily averages of 40,000.
"But people still had to queue about two hours to get in, not much less than before when we've had more visitors," Yang Yue, a spokesperson for the Spain Pavilion, told the Global Times Wednesday.
Volunteers said Wednesday that the park felt much emptier over the last few days.
"Every single bus is usually packed full at this time," Tong Yanhui, an Expo volunteer, told the Global Times Wednesday afternoon. "But, they're so empty today."
