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| Stamping Expo passports at France Pavilion |
The issue of Expo passports was originated in 1976 Montreal Expo of Canada. Expo passports were served as exposition admission tickets at that time and turned into popular souvenirs in later expositions. Since the opening of the 2010 Shanghai Expo, Expo passports have become the best selling souvenir and are always sold out quickly at the licensed stores inside the Expo park. Souvenir passports which carry the watermarks of different national pavilions on different pages are offered in four colors. Collecting stamps for the passport from visiting pavilions has added a bit of fun to the visits. Enthusiasm for the collection of pavilion stamps persists among visitors. The stamp serves as a proof of the pavilion visit. Most of the stamps are in unique beautiful design. To some visitors, the Expo passport serves as a gift to friends.
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| Souvenir Expo passport |
The majority pavilions provide visitors with the stamping services on the pathway towards the exit. A few pavilions offer the services at the entrance hall. The France Pavilion, perhaps, is the only one giving out stamping services to the visitors in the last few minutes of their queue-up time for admissions (see attached photo 1). I quite like the idea. This makes use of our boring queue-up time. Some pavilions request the stamps to be affixed on the designated pages. For example, the stamp for the France Pavilion has to be put on page 14 which posses a watermark of the image of its pavilion (see attached 2). For long time, we were not aware of the watermarks printed on the passport pages. Until one day, my eyes were caught by the watermark of the "Saudi Arabia Moon Boat" on page 35. It was good that the staff of the Saudi Arabia Pavilion had avoided putting the stamp on its watermark (see attached photo 3).
On our first day of the Shanghai Expo tour in May 2010, we entered the site at Puxi. As there were fewer souvenir shops in Puxi than Pudong and our first priority was going to get the City Name Card, we failed to purchase the passport. On the second day, we got it right after our admission to Pudong. We purchased one for each of us. My husband had his passport stamped while I kept my passport blank. Although we understood that a passport with a full collection of stamps could be bid for a few hundred to a few thousand RMB dollars, we were not too fancy about the stamp collection. I wonder who will be so silly to spend a few thousand RMB dollars to purchase a stamped passport souvenir.
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| Watermarks of different national pavilions |
Regarding the stamp collection, I read some negative reports on the internet. An article mentioned that some visitors were holding a few hundred passports for stamping, and some left the pavilions without any touring right after they had obtained the stamps. In our experiences, we did not see these pictures. Such rumors are questionable. In the reality, all visitors have to do their stamping quickly because there is always a long queue moving behind you. It is not feasible for a person to take up some time to stamp a few dozens passports. The long queue will certainly push him/ her go. For the popular pavilions, people need to line up for hours to reach the stamping counter. Will they solely come for the stamps but not the touring after queuing for a few hours? For the pavilions which are lack of attractions, it is reasonable that people take a quick glance and turn to other pavilions. If people are fancy in the collection of stamps, they can get many stamps from the Africa Pavilion. There are 42 countries and one organization in the Africa Pavilion. Similarly, visitors can obtain a number of stamps from the Urban Best Practices Area in Puxi. I saw some people ask to have the stamps chopped on their Expo maps because they didn't have any passports. This worked.
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