International expositions remain the largest and most important stage on which millions of humans routinely gather to experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. The London Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, regarded as the first of what later became known as ‘world fairs,’ evidenced features that were later to become standard, and was largely a national trade show, with Asia represented primarily through the display of objects, chiefly from British-colonized India. By the time of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle and the 1893 Chicago Exposition, these mass events presented opportunities for fairgoers not just to look at objects, but to gaze upon humans from far-flung, colonized lands, as foreign bodies increasingly constituted a key audience attraction. During the ‘golden age’ of the exposition which lasted until World War I, these human encounters, many of them staged in virtual villages such as the Cairo Street at the 1889 Paris Exposition or the Philippines Reservation at the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition, were presented as authentic reproductions of life ‘back home,’ making villagers available to fairgoers to be scrutinized, evaluated, and judged as they carried out the activities of daily life.