Design characterizes Shanghai, from urban planning to fine art. Indeed, Shanghai has become a center of contemporary art. How extraordinary for a city and a society that only a few decades ago shunned modernity and coerced homogeneity. Before reform, China was a drab, monolithic country. Everyone ate the same kinds of food and wore the same styles of clothes. "Art" was dictated by the state: It was coercive, superficial, mediocre, and boring.
Not so today! With reform, Shanghai exploded with vitality and creativity. Here one can see the most ambitious, the most audacious avant-garde art. In a Shanghai galley, situated in a converted steel factory, I marvel at the original and shocking visions -- from the elegant to the bizarre, the soothing to the sexual.
When future historians write the book of Shanghai's epic story, a middle chapter will be about Expo 2010. Expo's about the future. Shanghai's about the future. It's all you see. It's all you hear. Expo is expanding how people think. The world's creativity has come to Shanghai. No city is quite like Shanghai. Energetic. Adventuresome. Dynamic. Distinct. It is said that Shanghai-born basketball player Yao Ming symbolizes Shanghai's height; Shanghai's subway, Shanghai's depth; and Shanghai's Maglev train, Shanghai's speed.
Shanghai's new epic story is to become a world city -- a leader in business, finance, trade, science, technology, and perhaps even in culture. One can see all this at Expo. Before mid-century, China is forecast to surpass the U.S. as the world's largest economic power (though not in per capita income). As China reaches out beyond its borders and across the seas, reclaiming its role as a leading nation, Shanghai is forging the future, leading China today, and perhaps the world tomorrow.
Expo 2010 Shanghai is a historic event.