The South Seas Encouraging Industry Meeting – China’s First EXPO

The ridiculous silliness that is the Shanghai EXPO would of course just be funny if it wasn’t for the vast amounts of money and resources being squandered on the white elephant by both Shanghai and the governments of the world keen to suck up to Peking in any way possible.  One interesting side note  is that of course the official EXPO “story” as trotted out by officials offers a rather limited view of history.

Shanghai has made much of being the first ‘developing country’ to host the EXPO – they made no mention of the fact that China has had an EXPO before, back in 1910 at the Nanjing and called it the Nanyang Fair, or the South Seas Encouraging Industry Meeting. 2010 EXPO officials won’t even acknowledge that event.

This week’s Banyan column in The Economist is a nice commentary on the forgotten Chinese EXPO of 1910 and the silliness of 2010 – well worth a read. Click here.