An affordable travel adventure

Swedish entrepreneur Cliff Lilja gives his spin on the Expo. [Provided to china daily]

As a newcomer to China and Shanghai from a smaller and less populated country in Europe, I felt quite small and insignificant when I stood in the queue to get evening tickets for the Expo 2010 Shanghai. Thoughts went through my head saying this Expo has to be something really special.

Related readings:  Shanghai: The Paris of the East  Shanghai among world's most expensive cities to live in  Shanghai Handbook: Getting around town

When I finally was inside the Expo Garden after queuing in the ticket line, the entrance line and, eventually, a few national pavilion lines, I asked myself: "What is the big deal inside there? Why do the Chinese people stand in line hour after hour to slide down a big horn in the Swedish Pavilion or take pictures of the family sitting on lamb statues in the Netherlands Pavilion?"

This baffled me until I could finally place the pieces together from a more objective point of view.

I believe it's a chance to settle the populations' curiosity of the world outside of China and give them hands-on experience of a culture they might only have experienced from Hollywood movies or TV documentaries.

And when a roundtrip ticket to Europe or United States costs at least three months salary for a middle-class citizen, it is not surprising the willingness to stand in the long queues at the Expo - a place where you get to see the world for just 160 yuan a day. Or at least get a glimpse of the world and still have time to get home for their kungpao chicken.

The view I had of the Expo before coming here was mostly taken from European news reports and from the Expo tagline: "Better City, Better Life".

For me and most Europeans, I now believed the Expo will show how we can improve life in the cities for. But for most of the Chinese visitors I believe the Expo is more like an exciting sightseeing trip around the world where they get to visit any country they want in their own backyard.

A fun aside is that the Expo has an official souvenir passport and visitors can collect stamps for the passport from the different national pavilions. This is an extremely popular pastime and, yet again, queues are formed, this time inside each pavilion, to get a Swedish, Argentina and even Azerbaijan stamp on their passports.

But I still say "happy travels" to my new Chinese friends and recommend comfortable shoes and sun block for their upcoming "journey".

The author is an entrepreneur and also works as a political expert for social equality in the Swedish Government.