Dubai, Oct 1: After eight years of planning and billions of dollars in spending, the Middle East's first world's fair opened Friday in Dubai, with hopes that the months-long extravaganza will draw both visitors and global attention to this desert-turned-dreamscape.
The coronavirus pandemic pushed back Expo 2020 a year and could affect how many people flock to the United Arab Emirates. But the six-month-long exhibition still offers Dubai a momentous opportunity to showcase its unique East-meets-West appeal as a place where all are welcome for business.
Not long ago, the site of the 1,080 acre (438 hectare) Expo was barren desert. Now, it's a futuristic landscape buzzing with robots that dance and bark automated orders at bare-faced visitors to mask up, a new metro station, multi-million dollar pavilions and so-called districts with names like sustainability and opportunity" all built, like much of the Gulf, by low-paid migrant workers.
More than 190 nations are using their pavilions to spotlight their greatest tourist attractions, discoveries and ambitions.
The U.S. pavilion, paid for by the UAE after America struggled to come up with funding, boasts a replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket and takes visitors on a conveyor belt past multimedia infomercials for American inventions. It also displays a Quran that belonged to the nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson, as an example of how religious freedom is woven into the very fabric of American society.
China's vast, lantern-shaped pavilion focuses on the nation's space ambitions and future invention plans, featuring a Transformer-like car that SAIC Motor hopes will function one day also as a submarine and helicopter.
Draped over Italy's pavilion is 70 kilometers (40 miles) of rope made from 2 million plastic bottles. The main attraction, though, is a 3-D replica of Michelangelo's biblical hero, David, made from marble dust. The 5.2 meters (17 feet) high nude giant is not easily accessible visitors must must enter separate floors of a building to view it at eye-level or peer up from its feet. Public nudity is outlawed in the UAE, where traditional Muslim norms largely prevail.
The UAE's falcon-shaped pavilion, by far the site's largest, takes visitors on a two-hour-long immersive experience through dunes of real orange sand and footage from the country's 50-year history.
Other attractions include an African food hall, a royal Egyptian mummy, concerts and performances from around the world, and the option to dine on a 500 three-course meal with glow-in-the-dark cuisine.
Isabel Fu, 50, said she flew in for Expo all the way from Beijing to see the kind of changes that we'll see in the future, the technology that makes us look forward to the next era. Upon her return to China, she faces 21 days of quarantine.
Since first making a splash in London in 1851, world fairs have long served as an opportunity for nations to meet, exchange ideas, showcase inventions, promote culture and build business ties.
For more than a century, these global exhibitions have captured the imagination and showcased some of humanity's most important innovations. The first world's fair held in the United States in 1876 debuted Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, the typewriter, a mechanical calculator and Heinz Ketchup. One of its main buildings, Memorial Hall, is now a museum.
Other fairs introduced inventions like the sewing machine, the elevator, carbonated soda, the Ferris wheel and, in 1939 in New York, the television.
This year's Expo is unfolding as the virus continues to course across the world, with untold numbers still working and studying remotely and connecting to the world virtually. It's unclear how many visitors Dubai can attract, and how much the Expo will stimulate its tourism-driven economy especially in the blistering early autumn heat, which on Friday caused tempers to flare, some visitors to faint and most people to sweat through their shirts.
We're dying! Humans can't tolerate this weather, exclaimed 35-year-old Warda Abadi from Saudi Arabia as she shepherded her limping mother into the shade.
To enter the Expo site, visitors must show a negative PCR test or proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
Dubai's ruler and the force behind the emirate's transformation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, described Expo 2020 as a chance to showcase the best of human excellence.
It offers a platform to forge a united worldwide effort to build a more sustainable and prosperous future for all of mankind, he told guests at the Expo's opening ceremony.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince and de-facto ruler of the UAE's seat of power, Abu Dhabi, emphasized the ethos of this land as a meeting point for cultures and tolerance.
Whether Iran or Israel, every nation is welcome at Dubai's Expo. The space marked on maps for Afghanistan's pavilion, however, appeared vacant weeks after the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
It makes me very proud to see so many different kinds of cultures, countries and traditions coming to my country for the first time, said Isa Nuaimi, a 25-year-old government pilot from the Emirati city of Al Ain.
Human Rights Watch, however, said that the UAE's efforts to promote itself as an open and tolerant country remain at odds with a raft of human rights abuses, including the suppression of peaceful criticism, jailing of activists and pervasive government surveillance.
The UAE has embarked on a decades-long effort to whitewash its reputation on the international stage, the rights group said.
The Expo site will attempt to dazzle visitors with a centerpiece dome, marketed as the world's largest 360-degree projection screen.
Some world's fair structures remain iconic markers of the human journey and our industrial evolution. None more so than the Eiffel Tower, which was constructed in Paris, not only to be the tallest structure in the world at the time, but to serve as the entrance to the 1889 world's fair. The Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, built for the 1962 world's fair, also continues to enjoy global prominence.
While most fairs were held in Europe and the United States, none have been hosted in the Middle East until now.
Visuals from India's Pavillion at Dubai Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates pic.twitter.com/J7A12ZDJSb
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Jaipur, Mar 28: Young Riyan Parag showed why he is considered a precocious talent as he struck a stunning 84 not out off 45 balls to set up a 12-run win for Rajasthan Royals against Delhi Capitals in their IPL match here on Thursday.
Sent in to bat, RR were reduced to 36 for 3 in the eighth over but the 22-year-old Parag single-handedly took the home side to 185 for 5 with a magnificent unbeaten knock studded with seven fours and six sixes.
Parag, who was promoted to number 4 by the team management this season and made 43 in the previous match, took 25 runs off veteran South African pacer Anrich Nortje with scores of 4, 4, 6, 4, 6, 1 in the final over to hit his highest T20 score.
Chasing 186 for a win, DC could only manage 173 for 5 in 20 overs though South African youngster Tristan Stubbs (44 not out off 23 balls) kept them in the hunt till the final over from which they needed 17 runs.
Avesh Khan conceded just four runs to help RR win their second consecutive match.
South African pacer Nandre Burger and Yuzvendra Chahal took two wickets apiece to also contribute in the RR win.
"Definitely disappointed. The best thing to do from here is to learn from it. The bowlers did well through the 15-16 overs. But the batters did well at the death, hopefully we do better in the next game," DC skipper Rishabh Pant said.
DC were reduced to 34 for 2 in the fourth over with Burger taking two wickets in three balls in a fine display of fast bowling.
Burger, who was brought in as Impact Sub for Shimron Hetmyer, dismissed opener Mitchell Marsh (23 off 12 balls) and Ricky Bhui (0) in the fourth over.
DC captain Rishabh Pant came out to bat at the fall of Bhui's wicket and along with senior batter David Warner built the innings without taking too much risk. Delhi were 89 for 2 at the halfway stage.
Warner was the more aggressive one as he got the boundaries to keep DC in the hunt. The senior Australian batter fell one run short of his fifty courtesy a brilliant diving catch by Sandeep Sharma off the bowling of Avesh in the 12th over.
Warner and Pant were involved in a crucial 67-run partnership for the third wicket.
Playing in his 100th IPL match and 14 months after a horrible car crash, Pant tried to build the innings with occasional boundaries. But he got out for a 26-ball 28 as Chahal induced a faint lower edge for Sanju Samson to do the rest behind the stumps in the 14th over.
The asking rate shot up to more than 13 runs an over and DC needed 66 from the last five overs.
Stubbs kept DC in the game with two consecutive sixes off Ravichandran Ashwin in the 17th over, but in the end the Delhi side were short by 12 runs.
They needed 34 runs from the final two overs which they could not get. It was DC's second consecutive loss.
Earlier, Parag shared 54 and 52 runs respectively with Ravichandran Ashwin (29) and Dhruv Jurel (20) after RR made a shaky start.
Royals captain Samson struck three consecutive boundaries in the fourth over bowled by pacer Mukesh Kumar before nicking a Khaleel Ahmed delivery two overs later to Pant to get out for 15.
RR were 30 for 2 by then as Mukesh had given DC their first breakthrough with the wicket of Yashasvi Jaiswal (5).
The Royals were in more trouble after wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav literally forced his captain Pant to take a review, which later proved to be successful, to dismiss Englishman Jos Buttler for an LBW decision.
Ashwin came out to bat at number five and he lofted a Kuldeep delivery for a six to help RR reach 58 for 3 at halfway stage. He gave Nortje even a harsher treatment with two sixes in the next over that yielded 15 runs.
Ashwin, however, holed out to Tristan Stubbs near the boundary ropes for a 19-ball 29.
Parag then made his presence felt, striking two boundaries and a six off Ahmed to take RR past 100 in the 15th over.