CRI听力: Shanghai's Expo Attracts Thousands on First Day

The much anticipated Shanghai World Expo has attracted tens of thousands of visitors on its first day as the port city prepares to host an estimated 70 million visitors during the six-month long event. What are visitors' first-day impressions? Which pavilions do they want to visit most? Our reporter Zhang Cheng is now at the Expo Park. Let's follow him and have a closer look.

The Shanghai Expo threw open its doors to the public this morning. Is it time-consuming to pass through the security checks and enter into the Expo Park? Not exactly.

At Gate 6, the nearest entrance to the China Pavilion, there are 20 paths for security checks to the public. So, each queue is short, and takes people only a few minutes to get in.

In the park, I met Chen Xiaocong, a Shanghai resident. He said he came to the Expo Park last week for a trial opening day and ended up waiting for more than an hour to enter into the park. This time, he took a small stool for resting, but he was pleased to find that operations were running much more smoothly today.

"It was unexpected; when I arrived at the gate this morning, I found the number of visitors was much less than I expected. I passed the check point very quickly. I haven't used my stool yet."

For the first day, about 90 percent of the pavilions are open with a massive display of fantastic ideas, cultures and technologies. So, you don't have to go abroad to experience diversified cultures. However, one day is obviously not enough to have a good look.

At the park, you can also see some international visitors waiting in line to see their favorite pavilion.

"My name is Morgenstern. I am from Germany. Just now, we're going into Chinese pavilion."

"My name is Irineu from Brazil. Everything here is a surprise for us. Our expectation is to find the best things in the world."

But due to the large number of visitors, at the gates of some of the most popular pavilions such as the China Pavilion, Japanese Pavilion, there are queues over one thousand meters long. To visit these pavilions, you have to wait over 2 hours.

Plus, Shanghai is sunny today with a high of 25 degree Celsius so it is a bit exhausting to wait in the sun for hours. As a result many attendees changed their visiting schedules.

Hou Hui is from northwest China's city of Xi'an.

"Originally, I planned on visiting the Japanese Pavilion, but it will take me 4 hours to queue, so I left and came to visit the pavilion of Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Expo Axis & Four Pavilions are permanent buildings, so I can visit them next time."

On top of that, the large number of visitors has easily exposed the shortage of transportation services. At noon, when I wanted to take a shuttle bus from the Japanese Pavilion to the International Broadcasting Center, I crammed into one of them and couldn't move at all. Many visitors waited at the bus stop and couldn't get on the bus.

Organizers said over 350,000 tickets were sold out for the opening day. They predicted that over 300,000 people will visit the site today.

However, today there are actually fewer visitors in comparison to the projected daily numbers of future days. According to the organizers' predicted total of 70 million visitors during the six months, each day, the park will attract 400,000 people on average. The number is much bigger than that of first day, which could indicate more shortages of transportation services in the future.

For CRI, I'm Zhang Cheng, in Shanghai.