By staff reporter Wang Zhiyong

As Shanghai prepares to host next year's World Expo, advertisements for the event can be seen everywhere in the city, and the official EXPO 2010 store has already opened to the public.

The store is located on the bustling Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, one of the busiest and most fashionable areas in China's east coast metropolis. Yesterday evening China.org.cn reporters found workers at the store still putting the finishing touches to the decorations, but shop assistants said they were already making sales.

A manager said the store will officially open at the end of February.

Among the items on sale in the huge store are hundreds of dolls of the EXPO 2010 cuddly mascot "Haibao".

Haibao is a sky blue smiling figure that resembles the Chinese character for a human being "人" (pronounced "Ren"). Said by his creator to combine tradition and modernity, the mascot's name means "treasures of the seas," a reference to the benefits of international trade.

The mascot was chosen from 26,655 designs from 21 countries entered in a worldwide competition announced last April.

The winning design was the brainchild of 62-year-old Shao Longtu, a Chinese advertising executive. He said Haibao is supposed to be a happy, naive, confident and lovely child. The sky blue color symbolizes the earth, dreams, the ocean, life, the future and technology, according to Shao.

Although the 2010 World Expo is still 429 days away, build-up events are already under way, and preparations are reshaping life in the bustling city. Expo slogans are visible everywhere; at the airport, on road-side posters, and in huge advertisements on the top of skyscrapers.

EXPO 2010 will be the first time the World Expo has been held in a developing country and Shanghai is determined to put on a great show. But with international trade collapsing amid the world's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, organizers may face an uphill struggle to make the 2010 Expo a success.

(China.org.cn February 25, 2009)