Thoughts on Zaragoza Expo 2008 by Cheng Xialei

   ---On Jun. 29th, 2008, together with the expert panel from Ministry of Water Resources, I attended Zaragoza Expo 2008 held in Spain. We covered a variety of activities, including visiting exhibition halls, attending Chinese exhibition day and the water forum.

   The theme of Zaragoza Expo 2008 is "water and sustainable development". The expo mainly targets at promoting the development of new water culture, coordinating varied attitudes towards water and spurring everyone onto greater efforts. To be more specific, the expo aims at establishing itself as a place for discussion and communication on the topic of "water and sustainable development" and a place for gathering authorities and people working on water issue from all over the world. In the meantime, the expo fully exposes visitors to water issues and its relation to sustainable development and presents current solutions to water issues and good practice adopted by different countries, promoting the common development of all sectors and encouraging the establishment of management network, database and main indexes related to water.

   The expo is mainly composed of national exhibition hall, theme exhibition hall, water forum, theme week and other activities. The national exhibition halls are decorated with layout of different ecological zones, including ice and snow, oasis, plateau and mountain, grassland and plain, temperate zone forest, tropical zone forest, aggraded valley plain, island and coast. The theme and form of presentation are determined by exhibitors of different countries. The theme exhibition halls, with bridge, water tower, aquarium as their symbols, familiarize the public with knowledge of water as a kind of energy and expose water issues. The two governmental exhibition halls, Spain and Aragon, show the visitors the global challenge that human being will face in the future. The water forum, as an important supplementation of exhibition, contains a series of lectures and seminars. The theme week features discussion of topics of significance and temporary exhibition. Besides, 105 countries and 3 international organizations in total attended the expo.

   The mascot of the expo is Fluvi, an aquatic being with a semi-transparent body. It can purify and nourish everything within its reach. As a member of Posis family, it moves swiftly and leaves a chain of water beads where it reaches. Fluvi, a nature lover featuring holiness and generosity, has a magic of making the soil more fertile.

1. Visiting exhibition halls
   We covered almost all the exhibition halls and had a common comment that the expo features unique form of expression, hi-tech, popular science and rich ethnic characteristics.

(1). Adoption of hi-tech
   In many exhibition halls, hi-tech means like 3D animation, stereo, 360 degree imaging are adopted, which enable the visitors to experience first-hand and explore varieties of ideas and thoughts.

   For example, in one of the theme exhibition halls named "water in extreme", visitors are able to experience different kinds of climatic phenomena with the utilization of hi-tech video and audio effect. Visitors are seated in a swinging chair with roaring wind and feel for themselves the soul-stirring power of flood, landslide, tsunami and hurricane.

   In the Japanese exhibition hall, 3D animation on big screen takes visitors back to 200 years before to a beautiful city named "EDO", one of the biggest cities in the world, where all the resources are recycled in order to reduce waste and pollution and all the people enjoy a peaceful life. What "EDO" advocates is not water control but harmony between people and water.

   The adoption of stereo imaging technology in the Korean hall tells a story of a water giant, who provides people with clean water sources and help people eliminate fire. However, with the deterioration of environmental pollution and desertification, the water giant becomes smaller and smaller and finally disappears in the desert. The story once again awakens to the public the importance of water.

   In the German hall, visitors can sit in a boat and feast their eyes on the magnificent landscape alongside the Rhine River. And a pregnant woman is reading a novel ashore with lines " flowers don't bloom without water and children don't smile without water", which harbors profound meanings.

(2). Domination of popular science
   Because the expo spectators are mainly locals, overseas friends and mostly students and children, popular science is substantially disseminated, which directs more attentions to the water issue and sustainable development and helps people better know about the global challenges. Visitors not only find fun during the visit but also enrich their knowledge about water. The popular science displayed in the expo contains relations between water and life, definition of water crisis, causes of water crisis and so on. Besides, new technological achievements, including utilization of renewable energy, water-saving equipment, water-purifying equipment, fresh water processing and recycling, seawater desalination and urban flood-control, are exhibited, which bring together the most advanced technology and the best social and cultural experience from different countries.

   For example, in the Italian exhibition hall, new technology in water conservancy and water treatment, with which people are able to control the back flow of seawater with the sluice gate to prevent flood, is exhibited.
In the Danish exhibition hall, with renewable energy as the topic, Danish achievements and future objectives in the field of wind, solar and biomass energy are introduced. It is over 30 years since Danish began to do study and research on wind energy. Its wind units now take up 40% of the global market with the maximum unit capacity of 3MW and around 10 to 20 MW in 2012 as planned. The whole hall, concisely decorated yet creatively designed, is composed of four suspending transparent hollow cylinders, respectively showing to visitors the impact that greenhouse effect has on glaciers, wind energy, solar power and biomass energy.

   The Greek exhibition hall reveals us how to decompose water with solar energy to obtain hydrogen energy.

(3). Pervasion of ethnic culture
   Besides display of water-related topics, water culture and folk customs of different countries are substantially presented through varied media of picture, real object and performance.

   The African exhibition hall is mainly represented by 14 countries south of Sahara, including Mali, Cameroun, Benin, etc. With water, natural landscape, city and culture as its themes, natural environment, customs and water culture of each country are elaborated, providing visitors with a general picture of each country. Local dance is performed in Malaysia hall and attracts throngs of visitors. In the Chinese hall, wonderful performance is staged as well, which wins thunderous applause from the visitors.

2. Chinese exhibition day
   On the morning of Jul.1st, local time, the opening ceremony of Chinese Exhibition Day of Zaragoza Expo 2008 was held. Leaders present were vice-chairman of NPC Standing Committee Jiang Shusheng, minister of Ministry of Industry of Spain Miguel Sebastiandeng and vice-minister of Ministry of Water Resources of China Mr Hu Siyi.

   Jiang Shusheng noted in his address that it was hoped that the presentation in the Chinese exhibition hall could not only deepen the friendship between the east and west but also consolidate the cooperation and exchange in economy, culture, science and technology, etc. injecting new vigor to the strategic partnership with foreign countries. It was especially pointed out that Dujiangyan Irrigation Works remained intact after Wenchuan earthquake, which is of great significance in testifying the quality and level of Chinese water project building capacity.

   He Shaohua extended his warm welcome to the guests present in his address and said that after the 8.0 magnitude earthquake, Chengdu, the land of abundance, was mostly undestroyed, facing a new round of development under after-quake reconstruction. I0 million Chengdu residents always appreciate the attention from the whole world and welcome you to the beautiful city to embrace the nature.

   Later, artists from Chengdu art theatre, Chengdu opera house and Chengdu art school performed the local dance and acrobatics, etc. which embodied Chinese traditional art and culture and wined rounds of applause.
After the opening ceremony, we toured around the Chinese exhibition hall, speaking highly of it. With the theme of "humankind and water in harmony", the Chinese hall, one of the biggest halls, covers 1200 square meters and attracts massive media and visitors. During the 3-month exhibition, China’s rich experience in different times, from the immemorial to the far future, in water pollution treatment, water saving and urban sewage treatment was extensively presented. It was estimated that the Chinese hall handled over 1 million visitors during the expo.

3.water forum and mutual exchange
   As an important part of the expo, water forum provides a place and chance for people and organizations, including international community, countries, local governments, consumers, NGOs, engineers and administrators, to get together and communicate. Meanwhile, it also provides reference for sustainable management of water resources.

   The water forum consists of several topics, and during Jun.16th to Jul. 18th, five topics including water and land, water and city, water and life, the only resource –water, water supply and sanitary facilities were staged. Our delegation attended one of the forums with the topic of water and life from Jun.30th—Jul. 2nd. Its basic viewpoints are summarized as follows: water is the basic element of life and bears direct relation to people's health; energy and industry, an indispensable part in economic development, needs water as well; extensive attention should be paid to water issues through mass media. Celebrities present in the forum were Maria Neira from WHO and Danny Leipziger, vice-president of World Bank.

   Because over 85% of the visitors are locals, Spanish is the main language used, which brings hurdles for communication. However, we sought to communicate with others and left our cards for future study especially on some advanced technology.

4. Thoughts on the expo
（1）.Zaragoza Expo 2008 is well-organized with clear content and theme, making it easier for visitors to have a common understanding of water. It also helps to raise people's knowledge and awareness towards water resource.
（2）.Zaragoza Expo 2008 is technology-intensive in its forms of expression, which reinforces the interaction with visitors and represents a future trend that is worth much appraise.
（3）.On renewable energy research, there is still a long way for China to go. For example, Denmark is capable of producing 10-20MW wind turbine unit, but manufacture capacity for China is only 1MW for the time being.
（4）.Spain is a country valuing individuality and national culture.

   Although it is an expo on a global level, Spanish is still the main language used. Besides, Spanish people are very open and unconstrained. We arrived in Madrid on Jun. 29, when the final of Europe Cup 2008 was being played in Sweden between Spain and Germany. It was the very first time for Spain to play in the final and expectedly Spain beat Germany 1:0, being the champion of Europe Cup 2008. In that case, Spanish people thronged the streets and waved the national flags, crazily enjoying themselves to the heart's content.(2008-07-30)