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West Lake Expo beginning to appeal to expats
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AMERICAN George Borrelli has lived in Hangzhou for over five years. Last year for the first time he participated in the city’s expo, West Lake International Expo. This year he brought over 500 expatriates with him.
The foreigners attended Alibaba’s Computing Conference, participated in night run and attended music festival. Now they will go to the 6th International (Hangzhou) Trail Walk and Asia Design Forum.
The 18th West Lake International Expo that runs until October 31, features over 30 key forums, conferences and meetings.
Senior officials and businessmen from abroad also participated in the expo development forum, the new business forum, the annual Financial Times Summit, and the Computing Conference.
“Hangzhou is being internationalized, and I want to be part of it,” said Borrelli. He attracted the foreign participants to sign up through his website Hangzhouplus.com.
Antonio Gutierrez is one of the participants at the computing conference. He stood out among the crowd because he was recording everything with his iPhone.
“I do video blogs,” said Gutierrez who is from California, US. “I’ve never participated in a tech event that big, which is cool enough to be captured.”
The expo has been held in the city for the last straight 17 years and Hangzhou is striving to give it an international flavor.
The event, which was first held in 1929, was modeled after the World Expo held in Philadelphia in 1926. The governor of Zhejiang Province at the time, Zhang Jingjiang, wanted to use the expo as a way to promote the city and stimulate the economy.
It proved successful.
The 131-day event exhibited nearly 15 million items from home and abroad and attracted about 20 million visitors.
But there was a long hiatus after that. It was not until 2000 — 71 years later — that it was revived.
Today the expo’s theme includes information technology, economy, tourism, and culture. It has also evolved into an annual event that helps in promoting Hangzhou and its exhibition and convention industry.
After the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, the city government decided to give full play to the post-G20 effect at the expo and for the 33 other major events to be held in the city.
“The G20 stimulated the vitality of the historic city. After it, a series of high-end conferences and forums would continue to boost the establishment of Hangzhou as an international exhibition and convention city,” Zhao Guangyu, vice president of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Hangzhou Committee, said at the Financial Times Chinese Annual Forum.
The forum, co-organized by Organizing Committee of West Lake International Expo, Financial Times, and FT Chinese, is a key player at the expo.
Visitors to the fair will appreciate food and other related things that were on offer at the G20 Summit.
The G20 Cultural Summit at the World Trade Center in Hangzhou showed scenes of the September summit with the help of multimedia, articles, performances and souvenirs.
The Cultural and Creative Expo exhibited tableware especially designed for the welcoming banquet, and tea cups used by Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama.
Visitors can also travel to places related to the summit and try out the 20 special local dishes.
This year the expo is expected to achieve a trade turnover of 10 billion yuan (US$1.49 billion) and attract US$1 billion of foreign investment and 10 billion yuan of domestic investment.
It is estimated that about 8 million people would visit the expo.
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