The wait is over: the World Expo 2010 opened last weekend, starting with a gala performance and fireworks on Friday evening, followed by the Expo site’s opening on May 1. The VIP gala dinner, complete with a stage show, included 16 heads of state, among them Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Republic of Korea President Lee Myung-bak, Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Music programming was provided by composer Tan Dun and American musician Quincy Jones, with performers from China, the Chinese diaspora, and around the world. Stars on hand included singers Jackie Chan, Song Zuying, Andrea Bocelli, and Shinji Tanimura, and piano prodigy Lang Lang. The fireworks concluded with an extra bang, shooting from the Oriental Pearl Television Tower — one of Shanghai’s most famous skyscrapers — in a manner reminiscent of Cai Guo-Qiangs design for the 2001 APEC Summit in Shanghai.

The VIP opening on Saturday coincided with China’s International Labor Day holiday and attracted 204,000 visitors to the five-square-kilometer site, according to the official Expo website. May 2, the first day open to the general public, brought 215,000 visitors to the fair, with 191,000 arriving by noon, and 193,300 people there at the busiest period.

On opening day, queues for the most popular pavilions — including China, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia — ran for hours, as did most food and beverage offerings. Enthusiasts lined up as early as seven in the morning, two hours before the gates opened, but by afternoon there was no wait to enter the park.

The crown-shaped China Pavilion was a favorite with the crowd, with all 30,000 of the opening-day tickets being used. Visitors not lucky enough to secure a ticket during opening weekend found many other opportunities to enjoy the Expo. Under the Dutch Pavilion, called “Happy Street,” a collection of white wooden sheep served as benches and photo ops. Ethnic folk performances from around the world entertained waiting visitors, from Chinese operas to Maori and clog dancing to Swedish horse painting, as did the five parades that wend through the Expo site daily between noon and 9 p.m.

While the national pavilions, laid out by region on the Pudong side, were the primary attractions at the opening, the theme and corporate pavilions, mostly in the Puxi area, have proved an ideal option for visitors seeking to beat the crowds. Puxi offerings like the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion, the Coca-Cola Happiness Factory, the Oil Pavilion, the CISCO Pavilion, the Footprint Pavilion, and Jiangnan Square provide more in-depth exhibitions on the official Expo theme of urban sustainability.