An Expo gift from the city

First, I heard news that said the city of Shanghai would be giving a free Expo ticket and public transportation card to each household in the city. Then I heard that foreign households that had lived in Shanghai for 6 months or more were included. But another source showed photos of city-block-long lines said to be people waiting to claim their free ticket. So I effectively gave up on the idea.

When a notice went up in our apartment lobby, my curiosity was re-piqued. A co-worker mentioned that a friend had taken their passport and employee ID to the front office of our apartment complex and then received tickets through the mail. So a couple evenings ago I grabbed our passports and headed out with Charlotte and Maryann in tow.

Ten minutes later, I walked out of the office with an Expo-themed envelope in hand. It turns out that there were two policemen waiting at a table specifically for this purpose. They recorded our address, the number of people in our household, and our length of stay in Shanghai, asked me to fill out a satisfaction survey about the ticket distribution process, and then handed us the goodies:

A thank-you letter to Shanghai residents

What's inside?

A map of Shanghai.

A small folder titled "2010 Shanghai World Expo". Inside is…

A thank-you note from the city government and CCP Shanghai Committee, and…

A commemorative public transport card in one pocket.

And an Expo ticket in the other.

I hear that these tickets are being distributed on a rotating schedule by district and that Pudong was scheduled early, so keep your eyes and ears open for your chance to claim one. Comparing it with our other tickets, it's no different from the other regular entrance tickets: good for one adult for the entire duration of the Expo except the May and October holidays month of June only. I suspect that tickets for other districts will be for July, August, and so on.

The funny thing is that Jodi and I are collecting Expo tickets like crazy without meaning to. Originally I bought four discounted pre-sale tickets through my school, then the school gave us one ticket as a gift, then the school's social committee used their budget to buy each teacher another ticket, then Jodi got two tickets free from her school, and then the city government handed us the ticket shown above. That's a total of 9 tickets. And if my recent visit to the Expo was any indication, we'll use every single one of them.