Visitors to Shanghai World Expo will be dazzled by rare exhibits in the Czech pavilion, Czech Participation General Commissioner Pavel Antonin Stehlik has told Xinhua.

In previewing the pavilion, Stehlik said the forefront of the building would depict the Old Town of Prague using 40,000 pucks, the black rubber disks used in ice hockey.

The interior of the pavilion would present the Czech Republic as a crossroads, where ideas, civilisations and technologies met and were transformed by Czech creativity into new contributions to civilisation, Stehlik told Xinhua.

"We have asked the Czech public to help us choose some of the exhibits, and many people responded," he said.

Chinese visitors will get a chance to take part in a popular Czech tradition by touching a part of the historic statue that stands on Prague's Charles Bridge. According to the tradition, touching the statue brings luck.

Every exhibit would have an interactive feature, Stehlik said. The goal was to surprise visitors, he added.

Some visitors may be excited to find that a small part of exhibition will be dedicated to the great writer, Franz Kafka, a cultural symbol of Prague

But they are more likely to be dumbfounded by exhibits relating to Jara Cimrman, a fictional inventor of huge popularity conceived by Czech artists.

(Xinhua News Agency January 26, 2010)