Fair world?

By Tarek Atia

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Like most visitors, my tour of the Global Village on the outskirts of Dubai begins at dusk. The cardboard booths hark back to caravans in the desert, a port city filled with goods and people from everyhwere. The Global Village is a microcosm of what the Dubai Shopping Festival is supposed to be -- the ultimate meeting place for buyers and sellers from around the world. The 46 countries participating in the village sell their wares out of pre- fabricated pavilions meant to replicate some aspect of their home countries -- the UK's features Big Ben, China's a typical red temple.

On the surface, the village's amusement park rides, street performers and pavilions may look like an exact mirror of world fairs of yore or Walt Disney World's Epcot Center of today.

Both resort to the same type of clichéd slogans, like "Around the world in 80 minutes", on their t-shirts and marketing paraphernalia. The fundamental difference is the manner by which middle-America (or in this case Arabia) is stripped of their money.

At Disney, the pretence is education, with the end result the purchase of Mickey Mouse trinkets. At Epcot's China pavilion, after a cursory tour of pre-selected aspects of Chinese culture, you're supposed to buy a furry Disney toy, typically sold to you by a pimply Florida teenager. Here, there is little attempt to provide homogenised or educational multi- cultural fare. The guise of consumerism at the Dubai Global Village's China pavilion is far simpler -- to buy Chinese goods from actual Chinese people.

While Disney's Epcot Center and Dubai's Global Village both replicate travelling, providing alternatives to experiencing these countries for yourself, their fundamentally differing concepts beg several questions: Which is a better way of acquainting yourself with the world? Which contributes more to the understanding, or financial well being, of the other?

Dubai's Global Village seems more fulfilling, more honest and direct about the reality of travel for most people today -- that it's often more about what you bring home with you, than what you've actually seen. And by allowing each country to decide what its best, or most sellable, wares might be, Dubai's version of globalisation seems to have been taken to a more "act global, think local" conclusion.

It's interesting comparing what each country has managed to put together -- and how representative that selection might be. In the Thailand pavilion, you can have your foot massaged at 100 dirhams ($27) per hour. In the Afghanistan pavilion, a silk blazer costs 130 dirhams ($35); a heavy leather coat with fur collar about 250 ($70). You can get pierced in Sri Lanka, or buy a wild array of spices in Pakistan. In the Egypt pavilion, business is swift, with lots of interest in the shishas, galabiyas, and even underwear on sale. Two of the booths are dedicated to selling libb seeds and nuts.

It quickly becomes clear that every country's foods will be represented in some quirky way. Lebanon's pavilion features pickles and jams; Thailand has lollipops and sour fruit. Nearly every country has a booth selling herbal concoctions -- with a particular focus on honey. And thus the work of bees becomes a global unifying point. And if you can't wait to go home to eat what you've bought, there are more than 50 restaurants scattered around the "village" featuring food from many of these same places.

Some of the countries' pavilions -- Australia, Canada, and Nigeria -- are strangely empty, not ready for the five million or so people who are expected to come here over the next two months. It seems more logical that the war torn lands -- Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan -- all have pavilions that look impressive from the outside, but are little more than shells within, with most of the booths closed.

India's, on the other hand, is like a whole city in and of itself, huge with tonnes of booths. At 130,000 square feet, and with a façade meant to replicate the Mysore Palace in Karnataka, it's the biggest ever in the history of the Global Village, featuring -- on its own -- some 300 shops and 200 musicians who will perform for the crowds over the fest's duration.

In the UK pavilion, there's a booth where visitors can have their pictures taken and superimposed on backgrounds like Big Ben, so it looks like they've actually been there. Business, the booth's owner told a local paper, has been good, especially among Gulf Arabs who are limited by new post-9/11 restrictions, but still want to "visit Britain without a visa!"

Is the lack of a US presence in the village significant? It's almost like the world's superpower is snubbing this more egalitarian Disney mutation, content with American brands' nearly omnipresence in the city's malls.

If anything, Dubai's Global Village seems to be an attempt to break that stranglehold of clone-like franchising that seems to have become globalisation's raison d'être. This global village is more about the world as a random, multi-coloured carnival, with Dubai providing the venue, and collecting the rent.