Just back from the Wellington cultural and networking evening here in Shanghai, which was well attended by a mixture of expat New Zealanders and Chinese business people.  It was held in NZ Central which, apropo of my previous post,  I think is a great investment for NZ Inc.  It is a space that promotes New Zealand right in central Shanghai, and is available for business people coming to Shanghai to use as a base.

Its hard to be sure at events like this with a somewhat self-selecting audience, but there seemed to be a genuine interest in New Zealand.  While there was a lot of talk about exporting our value added products and knowledge into China in key areas such as agriculture and horticulture, there was great interest in our IT and production industries.  There are a number of production companies represented on the Wellington delegation, along with Richard Taylor from Weta, and they have all reported great progress with joint ventures in film and TV production in China.

The cultural side of the evening was brilliant, with Elena and her troupe wowing the audience.

Earlier in the day we had a youth forum at the NZ Pavilion at Expo.  One of the Chinese participants was the volunteer coordinator for the Expo. They have around 8,000 volunteers working each day on site, and around 400,000 visitors each day.  It is vast.  From what I saw the New Zealand pavilion stacks up well, and offers some unique experiences, especially in terms of the outdoor area complete with  hot pools, veggie garden and Pohutakawa.