College student Miao Linzhi visited the Shanghai World Expo site in early August. His target was clear: as a computer science major, he headed directly to the Corporate Pavilions, including the Information and Communication Pavilion, Broad Pavilion and SAIC-GM pavilion.

He was impressed by the non-electronic air-conditioned "Ye Zi" (Leaf) concept car, the visualization of urban traffic in 2030, and other high-tech exhibits.

"It' s a great inspiration for me. I never thought about these things before," said the 22-year-old.

Miao is not the only one to have been inspired by the half-year-long World Expo which started on May 1. Children who visited the Space Home Pavilion left messages saying they wanted to become astronauts when they grew up.

Ba Jiao, deputy curator of the Space Home Pavilion, said that would be an important part of the legacy of the Expo.

Ba said the theme of the Space Home Pavilion was all about "dreams and the future" . Even the three-dimensional movie "Wan Hu flying in the sky" , about a farmer' s dream of flying in the sky in ancient China' s Ming dynasty (1368-1644), showed audiences that every dream could come true one day.

"The abilities of imagination and innovation are significant to a nation," she said.

The pavilion had received some 2.7 million visitors by the middle of October, with a maximum daily attendance of 53,000 people.

Ji Shisan, founder of an organization called "Scientific Squirrels" , which aims to make science popular, said people could no longer expect the Expo to reveal "big surprises" such as the steam engine and the incandescent lamp when the Internet could inform the world about such kind of developments in a matter of minutes.

However, he said it was important to give the general public an opportunity to closely look at and experience high-end technologies.

The Shanghai World Expo has attracted a record of more than 71 million visitors. On one hand, while more people got the chance to see new technology, on the other, the large numbers of crowds made it impossible for people to seek out more information.

Chen Tuoyang, high school student from Tian Jin, said he had always been interested in robots. So the violin-playing robot in the Japanese Pavilion and the 6.5-meter animated baby robot "Miguelin" in the Spanish Pavilion made him very happy.

"I' m so excited. They reflect such a high level of technology," the 12-year-old said. But he didn' t find any descriptions of the robots and found it practically impossible to talk with the staff among the crowds.