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Maybe you've noticed a cutesy lil' deer mascot named 乐乐 (Lele) posing around town, or maybe you've actually opened up the papers today to see Shanghai media enthusiastically promoting the occasion - but yes, the Shanghai Tourism Festival is starting up this Saturday.
What Lele looked like in 2008
The annual tourism fest is a chance for Shanghai to promote its own attractions, as well as to show off other countries as possible vacation spots to the ever-increasing Shanghai middle class. So what's in store for us this year? Some of the highlights include:
SEPTEMBER 12
- The Opening Gala - held at Happy Valley in the not-so-specific time frame of "afternoon."
- The Opening Parade - Starting at 7:30pm, a 22-float parade will travel down Huaihai Lu, between Shaanxi Nan Lu and Xizang Nan Lu.
- Carnival Grand Opening - After the parade ends, head over to the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street between 9pm and 11pm for song and dance performances and other types of carnival-like fun.
SEPTEMBER 13
- Jiuzi Park Games - A whole bunch of competitions will take place throughout the day at Jiuzi Park, including photography, shows and... kids' games. We're not exactly sure what those kids games are, but the site assures us that if we were old Shanghainese, we'd know exactly what they're talking about.
SEPTEMBER 17 to 19
- Hip Hop Dancing Competition - We're hoping that this will end up like a Shanghai's Best Dance Crew contest or something. Watch spins, pop n' lockin' and all that good stuff at Century Square on Nanjing Lu.
SEPTEMBER 13 to OCTOBER 6
- Food Festival - Major restaurants are apparently participating in various food fairs, flavor dish exhibitions and farm markets throughout the next four weeks. We're still searching for the page that tells us exactly which restaurants will be participating... if anyone can tip us off, we'd be extremely grateful!
Other events can be found here (in Chinese only, unfortunately).
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A festival for tourists about tourism! How awesomely self-referential.
Can't wait to see how tourism will be discouraged next year because of visa clampdowns and the such...
Why would there be visa clampdowns? All the sensitive dates of 2009 will be past and Shanghai will want to encourage people to visit the Expo. I imagine the visa situation will be very similar to what it is like currently. One month tourist visas, student visas, and work/residence permits. Should it be any different?
Because they don't care. More than a year ago they did the same thing. The end result was that 70000 factories went out of biz in southern China, because buyers couldn't come to visit the expos or couldn't get the visas to visit the factories, more went down when the financial problems started in USA. The factory guys in GuangXi that I dealt with at that time, were hiding from their laid off workers.It was a total chaos for awhile and the gov officials were running for their lives.
Where is the parade of the prostitutes? They are clearly the most visible and omnipresent tourist attraction.
Every time we are requested booze, women and Rock'n'Roll. We answer:" How about we just give you more of the first two to compensate the lack of the third". It seems to work well with guys.