CDT's latest in their ongoing translations from the Chinese blog the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee reveal a list of eight prominent news items that the Propaganda Department doesn't want "hyped" in the Chinese media. Among the typically sensitive subjects of murder, death, promiscuity, etc., there is a more bizarre missive: "The retention or abandonment of World Expo pavilion buildings."
The dismemberment of the pavilions has thus been deemed simply too painful for the people to watch. Everybody knows that the government spend billions of RMB to build them and advertised the Expo for more than three years; people who visited Expo had to wait in line for more than eight hours in order to see one pavilion. They have a very strong feeling about the Expo and of course those pavilions.
So what is to become of our absurdly expensive beloved pavilions? The interesting thing is when I searched information on line about how government dealt with those pavilions; most search results have been censored. I tried different key words, until I exchanged the words "demolition of expo" with "fate of expo." Keeping with the holy personification above, apparently we're dealing with a broader destiny here, not just pretty hunks of metal and wood.
Interestingly, according to one CCTV report, the reason China won’t be keeping some of the more pricey pavilions like Japan or Saudi Arabia is that they can't afford the intellectual property rights regarding technology used during construction required to own them! So instead, they're either selling them off (Most recently sold: the Taiwan Pavilion for 97.2 million RMB ($14.45 million USD) to Hsinchu City in Taichung County, Taiwan). The price tag includes the design of the Taiwan Pavilion's day and night view, LED screens and the flying-lantern platform, the globe-shaped theater, logo, and its metal frame), auctioning them off for charity (if you bid for a piece of UK pavilion on line, the money will go to charity), shipping them back to their respective countries, or of course dismantling them for scrap.
I have fixed feelings about China. And I have been thinking what is the most important thing to be considered in this country. My answer is "face". China is like a fancy building. When you look from outside, it looks like a 5 star hotel but made of rotten wood. Bugs are continuing to eating it, making holes in it. Instead of killings the bugs, fixing the holes, China spend the money buying chandelier to make itself look more beautiful. But everybody knows what it's like inside.
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