SB Conference

SB会 (SB huì): SB Conference

In Chinese, the World Expo is called the 世博会 (shì bó huì), literally “world expo conference.” The initials of the first two characters are SB. Coincidentally, SB is a common online abbreviation for the Mandarin profanity 傻屄 (shǎbī), which translates roughly to “stupid cunt.”

The 2010 World Expo in Shanghai has been controversial due to its enormous cost (the government spent more on the Expo than it did on the Olympics in Beijing) and also because of the way local residents were removed from their land with allegedly low levels of compensation. Netizens claim that the government will profit greatly by reselling the land after the Expo when the pavilions are demolished and the land is cleared. Netizens who have been critical of the World Expo have been intimidated and interrogated by China's Internet police, the Domestic Security Department. (See China Digital Times, here).

The government has also angered some Shanghai residents by making efforts to restrict the outdoor wearing of pajamas, a longtime Shanghai tradition, so as to put on a good face for foreign visitors.

Shanghai Expo