greetings from laodong hotel in beijing! i am writing this letter offline and will post as soon as possible.
the last time i wrote, the whole ngo forum--the computer rooms included--was being disassembled. i logged off just & got up to freshen up before joining the cleaning frenzy. just a i was walking towards the wc, the night security guard greeted me and gave me several ngo posters with the great wall of china. i thanked him profusely & gave him my business card. i had given him some candy & marlbro cigarettes the night before as a goodbye gift, but had never, ever expected this kindness-i will display his gift posters with pride. i hope that he & his family are doing well.
then we broke down the computer room. the hp & apple staff were amazingly quick in getting their computer setups broken down & packed in their original boxes. i understand that the hp computers will go back to beijing universiry & the macs are destined for the women's university. apc broke down the internet server, quickly & carefully tucked it into a van, and was immediatly driven to the un site for re-installation. meanwhile the rest of the apc piled trash in empty cardboard boxes (no trash cans), recovened for a final farewell to the room (goodbye!), and was led by the womensnet coordinator to a restraunt for our farewell to huairou dinner.
when i first walked into the restraunt, i thought: what a dive! there were bikes lining the alcove, unscrubbed walls, the kitchen was to the immediate left. the further i walked, i realized that it was a whole series of one room buildings joined together to form the restraunt & staff living quarters (someone's bedroom was in the middle of the whole compound). the first room they tried to squeeze us into was too small for 25 people, but we were able to order our drinks (beer, coke, & sprite) while we waited for the larger dining room to open up. while the womensnet coordinator negotiated our menu, we discussed an anonymous yet seriously misleading press release (issued on official ngo letterhead) about the internet services at the ngo & un forum including information dissemination & followup process. while acknowledging apple, this press release neglected to acknowledge apc's contribution (apc is providing the internet service link at the un/ngo conf, provides internet service to many ngos, and is an ngo with consultative status itself).
than the food came--what a feast! eggplant, mixed vegetables, spicy tofu, garlic greens, stuff for eaters--one plate after the other! the favorite: fried bananas! one dips them in water, the sauce carmelizes, and is quite a treat. everone also had a sip rice wine (seems stronger than sake) which most denounced as kerosene--i enjoyed it. the food, the company, the service, and the setting made it absolutely one of the best dinners i have ever enjoyed!
the next morning the apc staff met for one last breakfast at the muslim coffeehouse. in the background where intense negotiations for a bus to take us all to the great wall--we were told that there were no buses available in huairou, yet one tour bus had been pared out side of out hotel building the entire night. suddenly this bus was available & we road in style on an airconditioned bus up the winding roads, past cornfields & corn cribs, squash & vegetable gardens, luxury homes & squalid huts to the great wall.
(a further note about the farms: the soil around huairou was quite sandy/chalky & was red in appearance. the soil was much rockier going towards the great wall--forests sat on top of the thinest topsoil over sheer granite rock. the soil of the farms themselves was quite black, rock free, and seemed rich with compost. no irrigation was seen. the fields were neatly laid out & well-maintained, and there were many wind breaks of birch & willow trees. i wonder for what all the corn was used--it was everywhere being dried & in cribs, yet seldom appeared in any dishes we ate. in midwest america, corn from cribs & silos are often fed to livestock, the only livestock we saw were donkeys--perhaps pigs & chickens were tucked away else where, the corn was shipped to another region, or the farmers themselves eat the corn during the winter).
to be a great man you must walk the great wall: so says the motto on top of the great wall. the all women staff of apc (plus one baby boy) found this amusing as many of worked our way through the souvineer vendors selling handmade quilts in traditional american patterns, lace tableclothes, t-shirts,WATER, postcards, & name chops. after climbing the first staircase, most of us opted for the tram to the top. this skimmed the tops of trees & deposited us on the highest hump of the stone dragon's back. forests & hills stretched for miles. behind & before us the wall wound its way over the crests of distant hills with fortress buildings (and more souvineer vendors) equal distant from each other (one tech walked out as far as she possibly could until the great wall became to overgrow with foilage to continue). the wall itself was compose of large gray granite bricks, had tiny windows at the base of the footpath (from which one cound shoot arrows/guns?) and notches at sholder heigth from which guards could hail oncoming visitors. the wall was wide enough that one could easily march a column of soliders and from the ground looking up, seemed impossible to breach or rappel up. one wonders if the coc's visa/hotel confirmation policy was inspired by the great wall.
the russian tech & i decided o hike down (no problem, but our legs are still complaining!) and joined each others for shopping & a multi-course lunch. many people bought quilts. happy & very, very tired, we got on the bus, & went home to pack
the day had been perfect but as we got into our taxis, thunder & lightening roared in the distance--a splendid farewell. the streets of huairou were filled with chinese on holiday--it seemed that huairou was transformed from an international community back to its original self literally overnight. as we sped through the dark to beijing, we came upon small flocks of sheep, vegetable vendor carts etc.
we arrived and our new hotel & immediately began a 2 1/2 hr bargaining session to get into out rooms (two credit cards, 12 keys, 24 women's passports & hotel confirmation letters, & 100 yuan deposits for keys seemed to almost cause a staff melt down--good thing we had sent several preparatory faxes or else we would have had real problems). we finally were able to recalim our stuff, pair up with roommates, freshen up in fully tiled bathrooms (which need a good grout job), & then crash into beds with pillows, quilts, blankets, matresses & boxsprings.
sunday we met for breakfast & then went to un conference sigte to get our un passes. on the siide of the road, people laid out their wares to sell or had set up lean-toos in which they repaired bicyclesinitially i & several other techs were rejected because we were not on the list but the apc coordinator was able to fanagle our way in. two techs will have to wait a day & then receive their passes. while others were check out the computer room, i sat with the russian tech to wait for head tech to go SHOPPING!!!
we hailed a cab & pointed on the map to the dept stoe we wanted to go. 30 minutes & 50 yuan later, we were at a different dept store. no we didn't pacnic, but we were certainly place on guard against future problems. we quicly browsed, sam some great batiks & porcelins of kwan yin, bodhistavas, & dark taras (one display showed kwan yin, kwanyin with child, and then buddha--the head tech commented in that display one could see the history of the patriarchal usurption of the goddess). theb we hailed another cab & he brought us diectly to tiamin square.
how to describe tiamin square? the place is so massive, that it attracts history. immaculate, granite, windswept, easily 1 square kilometer, lined with buildings (a palace & mao's picture out on one end), tree-lined, rimmed with buildings, many entrances & exits). on this bright windy day, the square was filled with families. in this space one could easily place a village, all the delegates, participants & volunteers of he un wcw conferences, two armies & a coalition of students & laborers. no banners nor memorials seem to be visible ( i kept an eye out for democracy wall). if these stones could talk! mac donalds anchored two corners, the grand beijing hotel had banners welcoming the un wcw participants, & shopping was nearby.
after a delicious meal of eggplant, braised tofu, eggflower soup with tomatos in a tiny restraunt in a side alley, we went searching for a camera for the russian tech. she found the perfect one in a dept store, only to be brought a more expensive model because the first one was sold out . we then went to a camera shop featuring a life-size cardboard cut out of hong kong film star, jackie chan. the shop was also lined with streamers of jackie chan & kodak (or was it fuji) products. a half-hour later, the russian tech had a new ricoh camera, & we then went searching for raw silk & fairy lights for the head tech. instead of silk sops, we found many stalls selling leather jackets & vests. we found the head tech's fairy lights (& more jackie chan advertisements) in a chinses dime store. being true bibliophiles we also stopped at the foreign language bookstore, obstensively to buy another lonely planet mandarin language phase book (excellent), but i think we were all a bit homesick for our own libraries back home & just wanted to hang out with some books for a while. the lonely planet phrase book was sold out, the other english-chinese dictionaries seemed to impratical, so we wandered around, played with the english-->spoken mandarin langauge converter (like a calculator), noted that the chinese edition of idg's "internet for dummies" & "dos for dummies" series, checked all the chinese learning english workbooks, and was left in a daze by how incredibly busy this store was.
because it was close to five, we started looking for food to take home. on a side street we found a row of stalls selling all sorts of barbque meats & fish--not much for us vegetarians, but we bought home some chow mein & cantalopue on a stick. finally we got in a cab & were brought directly home
we're exhausted. after a bit of a rest we have a meeting. tomorrow we go to the un conference for user support & info gathering. more soon!
jennifer jennifer@wcw.apc.org.
