On May 9, Shanghai’s Russian community gathered in the St Nicholas Church on 16 Gaolan Road, for a special Victory Day service. Built in 1934, the Orthodox church was once used as a washing machine factory and later hosted a French restaurant, Ashanti Dome, on the upper floor, and a Spanish tapas bar on the ground floor called Boca. During the Cultural Revolution which sought to destroy the ‘four olds’ (old customs, old habits, old culture and old thinking), public worship was prohibited but quick-thinking believers of various religions posted images of Mao over their places of worship to prevent overzealous Red Guards from bursting in to destroy the buildings. The St Nicholas Church was one of such buildings — and the image of Mao kept watch over the building until it was taken down in the early 2000s. According to zinka who shared these pictures with us, the Russian community rented the church for this special event (note the worshippers standing under the disco ball), and it still remains unclear if and when the building will be converted back into a church.

Note to Chinese entrepreneurs: Start building your Dropbox clones now!

It’s been a roller coaster ride for the Shanghai Expo in terms of attendance so far. While the state media has been dutifully trumpeting the amazing ticket sales (apparently 33 million tickets have been sold, that’s almost half the target of 70 million!), all that hasn’t quite translated into real attendance yet. As you can see in the graph above which we found on the Shanghai Expo website, attendance has been mostly below 200,000, and on May 5, less than 100,000 visitors entered the Expo grounds.

Just how many visitors does the Expo need on site daily to hit its 70 million target? Global Times has done all the math for us — 380,000, or almost twice as many as we saw on opening day.

And how much money will the government stand to lose if the people don’t come? Over at the China Economic Review, Malcolm Moore extrapolates current attendance figures and based on an estimated two thirds paying customers, comes up with a potential 4 billion yuan shortfall — a figure we have to respectfully disagree with because he doesn’t take into account ticket buyers who eventually don’t show up.

There’s no doubt that Expo organisers will be able to sell 70 million tickets, or more if they so wished. Word on the street is that state-owned enterprises may be “encouraged” to pick up the slack — but getting all those ticket holders to show up? That will require more than just a bit of magic.