The Middle East’s first world’s fair opened Friday in Dubai after eight years of planning and billions of dollars in spending, with hopes that the months-long extravaganza will draw both visitors and global attention to this desert-turned-dreamscape.
Expo 2020 has been postponed by a year due to the coronavirus epidemic, which may reduce the number of visitors who swarm to the United Arab Emirates. However, the six-month exhibition provides Dubai with a unique opportunity to display its East-meets-West appeal as a city where everyone is welcome for business.
The Expo site, which spans 1,080 acres (438 hectares), was formerly a bleak desert. It’s now a futuristic landscape buzzing with robots that dance and bark automated orders at bare-faced visitors to cover up, a new metro station, multi-million dollar pavilions, and so-called districts with names like “sustainability” and “opportunity” — all built by low-paid migrant workers, like much of the Gulf.
Over 190 countries are showcasing their best tourism attractions, discoveries, and ambitions in their pavilions. The United States pavilion, which was paid for by the UAE after America struggled to raise funds, includes a replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket and a conveyor belt that transports visitors through multimedia infomercials showcasing American technologies. It also has a Quran that belonged to the nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, on display as an illustration of how religious liberty is “woven into the very fabric of American civilization.”
The huge, lantern-shaped pavilion dedicated to China’s space goals and future invention ideas includes the Transformer-like automobile that SAIC Motor hopes will one day also act as a submersible and helicopter.
70 kilometers (40 miles) of rope constructed from 2 million plastic bottles is draped above Italy’s pavilion. The major attraction, though, is a 3-D marble dust reproduction of Michelangelo’s biblical hero, David. The nude giant, which stands at 5.2 meters (17 feet) tall, is not easily accessible; visitors must enter separate floors of a structure to view it at eye level or stare up from its feet. In the UAE, where traditional Muslim standards predominate, public nudity is prohibited.
The falcon-shaped pavilion of the United Arab Emirates, by far the largest on the site, leads guests on a two-hour immersive experience through actual orange sand dunes and footage from the country’s 50-year history.
An African food hall, a regal Egyptian tomb, concerts, and performances from around the world, and the opportunity to eat on a $500 three-course meal with glow-in-the-dark cuisine are among the other attractions.
Isabel Fu, 50, said she traveled from Beijing for Expo to see “the kind of changes we’ll see in the future, the technology that makes us look forward to the next period.” She will be quarantined for 21 days when she returns to China.
World fairs have provided a platform for nations to connect, share ideas, showcase inventions, promote culture, and strengthen business ties since their inception in London in 1851.
These global exhibitions have caught the imagination and presented some of humanity’s most important innovations for more than a century. The telephone, the typewriter, a mechanical calculator, and Heinz Ketchup were all introduced at the inaugural world’s fair in the United States in 1876. Memorial Hall, one of the city’s main structures, is now a museum.
Other fairs debuted inventions such as the sewing machine, elevator, carbonated soda, the Ferris wheel, and, in New York in 1939, television.
This year’s Expo is taking place as the virus continues to spread over the globe, with unfathomable numbers of people still working and studying remotely — and digitally connecting to the rest of the world. It’s unknown how many visitors Dubai will draw, and how much the Expo will boost the city’s tourism-driven economy — especially in the scorching early autumn heat, which prompted tempers to boil, some visitors to faint, and the majority of people to sweat through their shirts on Friday.
“We’re going to die!” Warda Abadi, 35, from Saudi Arabia, shouted, “Humans can’t handle this weather!” as she led her limping mother into the shade.
Visitors must present a negative PCR test or proof of COVID-19 vaccination to gain access to the Expo site.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler and the driving force behind the emirate’s transformation highlighted Expo 2020 as an opportunity to display the finest of human excellence.
He told participants at the Expo’s opening ceremony, “It gives a platform to forge a united worldwide effort to build a more sustainable and prosperous future for all of mankind.”
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s crown prince, and de-facto ruler underlined “the ethos of this land” as a meeting point for cultures and tolerance.
Every country is welcome at the Expo in Dubai, whether it is Iran or Israel. However, weeks after the Taliban took control of Kabul, the site designated for Afghanistan’s pavilion seemed to be vacant on maps.
Isa Nuaimi, a 25-year-old government pilot from the Emirati city of Al Ain, stated, “It makes me very proud to witness so many various sorts of cultures, nationalities, and customs come to my country for the first time.”
Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, said the UAE’s efforts to portray itself as an “open and tolerant country” are at odds with a slew of human rights violations, including the suppression of peaceful protest, the imprisonment of activists, and widespread government surveillance.
The rights group stated, “The UAE has embarked on a decades-long effort to whitewash its reputation on the international stage.”
The Expo site will attempt to dazzle visitors with a centerpiece dome, marketed as the world’s largest 360-degree projection screen.
Some world’s fair structures remain iconic markers of the human journey and our industrial evolution. None more so than the Eiffel Tower, which was constructed in Paris, not only to be the tallest structure in the world at the time but to serve as the entrance to the 1889 world’s fair. The Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, built for the 1962 world fair, also continues to enjoy global prominence.
While most fairs were held in Europe and the United States, none have been hosted in the Middle East until now.
