Expo and the Logo-A-Gogo
Posted by MyLaowai on Friday, April 16, 2010
One of my researchers turned up an interesting fact the other day, and I thought to share it with you. You see folks, for the last year or so there have been these funny pictures turning up on the sides of buildings and in magazines and pretty much everywhere else you care to look, but nobody has had the faintest idea what they were supposed to be. Imagine my surprise when I was informed that they are in fact the Expo Logo! All this time, and I never knew!
The thing is, even now that I know what they are, I still haven’t the faintest idea what they are supposed to represent. I mean to say, how does something looking like a few used condoms flapping in the breeze represent a so-called ‘Expo’? Curious to find out whether the problem was with me, my team and I hit the streets of Shanghai. We stopped at random nearly four hundred people in the streets, pretending to be journalists, and asked them what they thought the thing was supposed to represent. The results of our polling show that people in general do seem to have a good grasp on what this ‘Expo’ thing is all about:
97% of the Chinese people we asked said that it looked like the fumes rising from the surface of the nearby Huangpu River. This is perhaps reasonable – after all the word “Huangpu” translates roughly as ‘Stench” in Chinese, and it is the only river I know of that you can walk across without getting your feet wet (although these days there’s every chance you will receive chemical burns).
94% of the foreign people we asked said that it looked like the ghosts of murdered Laowai’s rising from their shallow graves. Again, given that most of the parks in Shanghai are actually shallow graves for the thousands of foreigners who were murdered when the Communists took over, and that their bones regularly appear after heavy rains, this makes a lot of sense.
The official explanation is that it represents the Chinese ‘family’, looking down upon the rest of the world from a position of superiority. Actually, that’s a rough translation, the actual words read more like “condescending to look down upon the world like Gods”.
Anyway. make up your own mind. Here it is:
So there you have it, whiz-kids. Expo, a better city and a better life perhaps, but a crappier logo for sure.
Wo Shi Laowai - Wo Pa Shui 
Chinese Netizen said
Eh?? Expo???
But to comment on that “logo”, I’d say it looks like the greenish blobs of phlegm one sees on the ground everywhere that civilized Shanghainese expectorate every morning, that must be avoided like landmines.
justrecently said
94% of the foreign people we asked said that it looked like the ghosts of murdered Laowai’s rising from their shallow graves
Some Chinese people believe in Japanese ghosts, too. But it’s true that I’ve never heard a story about other foreign ghosts yet.
Anyway, in many ways, China is just a shanzhai version of Japan.
And what do the green and orange dots above the ghosts stand for? Skulls? Suns? Stones?
MyLaowai said
Perhaps they represent the twin suns of the original Chinese home world, far off in the Handromeda Galaxy?
Slap2tickle said
Or is it the Xenophobia Galaxy
Sinosceptic said
All I see is ‘La la’ – but if I squint a little, I can see a ‘chopper’ bicycle with a black plastic seat. Then again it is well after 22.00hrs here and I have been drinking a bit – if I close my eyes and just imagine a little bit, I can see a sign for a Happy Ending house just behind the Big Bamboo bar. But that’s just me – I can read tea leaves as well.
Slap2tickle said
To me it looks like 2 hospital workers disposing of an unwanted foetus in the river because it turned out to be a female after the parents spent all their savings in bribes to get an ultrasound.
Dave in Macau said
You guys are all wrong.
It is definitely a mutant siamese triplet born to poor peasants who were reduced to fishing in polluted lakes for food to supplement their meager subsistence income. I am sure we will soon see a profile of this curious beast on ChinaSMACK.
justrecently said
You are just as wrong, Dave. The designer’s mind was at something much more relevant than the Expo – the World Soccer Cup 2010. When soccer was invented in China 7,000 years ago, two teams played each other with two rice bags of two different colors.
Dave in Macau said
Could be a game of Chinese hacky sack in progress?
MyLaowai said
Ah hell, right or wrong, Dave wins the Comment of the Month Award with that one.
Love your work, Dave. Guest Post expected from you soon.
Sean said
I also never had any idea what that logo was supposed to mean. I think the little Blue Gumby character from the Expo logo does not in any way visually represent the meaning of the Expo. Oh well…it isn’t the first in China that didn’t make much sense.
Josef Fritzl said
This represents London quite well, in my opinion.
They recognize that whites are the asshole of the world, the UK a particularly foul turd, and London a cockroach scuttling around on its face.