During the past few weeks there has been a rumor going around that Chile is many guides’ favorite pavilion. We have been wondering what the pavilion has to offer that is so special, and now it was time to find out.
Swedish pavilion guide Ping Duong and I headed to the Chile pavilion, which didn’t look much from the outside, but when we finally entered the pavilion the atmosphere hit us straight away. The beautiful wooden interior, the originality of the exhibition design combined with the music streaming in every room made us understand why people have this pavilion as their favorite.
We know from experience though that to really get the whole concept of a pavilion the best thing you can do is to find a guide who can introduce it to you. We didn’t have to look long before we found not only one but two friendly Chilean pavilion staff members, Sebastian Aedo, 28 and Tomas Suazo, 26. We asked them what makes their pavilion stand out among others. They explained that their theme “city of relationships” is well connected with the Expo’s overall theme and has a strong message to send out, somewhat like the Swedish pavilion.
Throughout the exhibition you get to follow a young girl, Manuela, who is representing the innocent youth who will later become one of the decision makers in deciding what cities will become like in the future. Sebastian describes that a relationship city is defined by eight different principles on how to improve the cities. He says that the relationship between different cities and different people is very important to make any changes.
That relationships are in focus in the Chilean pavilion is something you can definitely tell when you enter the last room of the exhibition. The last room is called the square and is a place where people can sit down on wooden stairs and enjoy good live music, good food and famous Chilean wine.
Another attraction in the last room that we fully enjoyed was “the well of the Antipodes”. We looked down the well and to our surprise we could see Chilean guys looking up from the well waiving to us and blowing kisses. Sebastian explained to us that they have installed a live Webb-camera at different places in Chile so that people here in China can interact with the people on the other side of the earth. If you find someone interesting in the well you can write a message on a board and show to the other side. A Chinese girl and a Chilean boy exchanged e-mail addresses in the well a few days ago and who knows; maybe this is the future way to find your love.
