Uzbekistan will celebrate its national pavilion day on Tuesday at the World Expo in Shanghai. The Uzbek pavilion with the theme "Uzbekistan, the crossroad of civilizations" will showcase Tashkent, the capital of the country.

Tashkent is an oasis center on the banks of the Chirchik River, a distributary of the Syrdarya. In Uzbek the word "tashkent" means "stone city."

With a population of over 2 million, Tashkent is the largest city in the Central Asia country as well as the fourth biggest city after Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev during the Soviet era.

Tashkent with a history of more than 2,000 years used to serve as a major transportation hub on the ancient Silk Road that connected the East with the West.

As the largest industrial city in Uzbekistan, Tashkent became the country's political, economic, cultural and tourist center after reconstruction from a devastating earthquake on April 26, 1966.