World Fair

Filed in archive News on April 7, 2010

© jiazi

Shanghai hopes to get a big image and business boost when the World's Fair starts up there on May 1st.

This year's World's Fair is set to be the biggest ever. The World's Fair traces its roots to the French Industrial Exposition of 1844, held in Paris. That was followed across Europe by other similar national exhibitions. The first truly international exhibition was held on May 1st of 1851, in London. Since then Expos have been held (among other places) in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; Vienna, Barcelona, Lisbon, Brussels, Milan, Dublin, Seville, and Hanover; Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Diego, New York, Seattle, Montreal, and Vancouver.

The actual name for the World's Fair is Universal Exposition (or Expo); the Expos get classified as Universal, International/Specialised, or Horticultural.

The Fair first came to Asia only in 1970, when it was in Osaka, Japan. It returned to Japan (Tsukuba) in 1985 and came back to Osaka in 1990. In 1993 it came to Daejeon, South Korea and in 1999 it came to China for the first time - to Kunming.

The six-month long Fair is expected to draw in about 70 million visitors to China. Traffic at the Fair on the busiest days is expected to be around 800,000 people