Norway's pavilion at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai reaches one million visitors

Photo: Joon Hetland

On June 25th, the Norwegian Pavilion at EXPO in Shanghai welcomed visitor number one million.

The lucky visitor was Zhu Xingwei (48), a refrigeration engineer from the city of Changzhou, Jiangsu. He first thought he had done something wrong, as he was taken aside and congratulated by State Secretary Halvard Ingebrigtsen, Pavilion Director Espen Guterud and General Commissioner Arild H . Blixrud.

As gifts he received a diploma, Hamsun's collected works translated into Chinese, and a free four-course dinner for him and his wife Liu Aihua in the Norwegian seafood restaurant inside the pavilion. - It was incredibly fun to be guest number one million. My wife and I chose to go to the Norwegian pavilion because it looked interesting from the outside, but I never thought I'd experience this, Zhu Xingwei said.

Well attended
The ceremony took place at the end of the Norwegian tourism week, which had the objective to create more awareness of Norway as a tourist destination for Chinese tourists.

With a visit of approximately 20,000 people a day, the Norwegian Pavilion will likely reach a final attendance count of three and a half million by the end of EXPO in November. This is half a million more than originally estimated.

- EXPO has been a huge public success so far, and it is amazing to see how the Norwegian pavilion will take part in this, Ingebrigtsen said.