World Expo Representative: How Expo 2010 has transformed Shanghai

“The primary duty of any museum is to promote public education,” said Dimitri, who believes that the World Expo Museum needs to play a greater role in fulfilling its educational function. As he revealed, in the following months, BIE will work with the museum to turn the latter into an ultimate platform for education, not only in Shanghai and China, but also a large global education platform.

Since its founding, the museum has participated in the Expo 2012 Yeosu, Expo 2015 Milan and Expo 2017 Astana. It will also appear in Dubai at the Expo 2020. Speaking of his expectations for that, Dimitri said, “What I would like to see is that BIE together with the World Expo Museum will be involved in the forums that are being planned in Dubai with all the experts from the world in order to be able to take this information and all this intellect, bring it back here in Shanghai and push it forward for the next expos to discover.”

Thanks to the reform and opening up, Shanghai has changed a lot and, even since 2010, tremendous changes have continued to occur. However, “the feeling of the city remains the same. It is the same open city that I found in 2006, more than 10 years ago. It is still the same city where you can walk around freely and enjoy yourself. And there is something very special in Shanghai: a mix of cultures that have existed here, an international city and one that I very much enjoy coming back to as much as possible,” said Dimitri emotionally.

 (Dimitri’s wishes for China’s further reform and opening up.)

Story by Wu Qiong

Cameraman: Fan Yicheng