Day 6

Today is the last day of the conference. The curtains will be drawn at 4:00pm. Between the beginning and end of the day a lot has happened. First let me start with the lectures. I was interested in attending two panels. The first panel consisted of the armed conflicts and the second was on micro finance. I wanted to attend both the panels but could mange to attend only one at a time.
Choosing the microfinance panel, a person from bangaladesh was presenting the model of micro finance and education. He was using very familiar terms such as pedagogy, participation, empowerment, realization and so on. It sounded like a lot of old wine in new bottles. I clearly did not learn anything new. The next presentation was about the Secret towers of the Himalayas. It was about many tall towers that were built about 2000 years ago in china. Nobody knew anything about it. So a researcher works on it for 11 years to unravel the mysteries. She was also working on a micro finance model to develop the people who lived in that area.
After the presentation I had run out of patience and hence decided to move out of the room. I went straight to the next floor to find what was happening with the session on conflicts. A volunteer was sitting alone with a computer. She was very happy to see me. Perhaps I was the only person to visit her. She said that the people who had planned the session had not shown up.
My next stop was the documentary corner, I went to see if there were any exciting films playing. All I could find was documentary on a particular Chinese culture. I would have sat through it fully but I decided against it because half the film was already over.
Wanting to explore the city, I came to the arena where the buses were ready to depart for the tour of the museum. I got hold of my Sinhalese friend and got into the bus. We decided to go to the Daichi Lake. It was supposed to be very beautiful and serene. Well that is where we decided to go but when we asked around people could not tell where it was. So we just walked. We saw a very touristy place where many people were entering. So we decided to enter. We were a bit lost in the beginning. A man came by showed us his badge, one very similar to what we were wearing and signaled to follow him. We had no clue. The only thing we knew was that he had a badge. We followed him. He was quite fast in speaking Chinese, I could not make sense of what he was saying. The only thing I understood was that he was Yi. He pointed a book on ethnic minorities and said that he was Yi.
We cruised passed all the villages. It was a huge park. Every ethnic minority had its own place. All the little village models were tourist traps. They showcased their culture and also wanted us to take a part of their culture with us in the forms of some articles that they sold. There were women and men dressed in their traditional costumes and would dress us up in that as well, so that we could take a few pictures and go home to tell our people we had met the real minorities.
Having less than one hour at hand we really had to hurry. It was a 500 acre park. We could hardly get a few glimpses. But we did what best we could do and hurried back to the bus. The man was taking us all along. He suddenly jumped into a battery cart thinking that it was too late. He was also ready to pay for us. But I insisted that we could walk and cover the entire distance and so we did.
We got back just in time for the bus.
Getting back to the university we were ready to get some lunch. There were no surprises. Braised pork, Braised chicken, diced pork/beef, a whole lot of veggies, dry fish dry fried, winter melon soup, corn porridge, rice porridge, rice noodles, wheat noodles, fried noodles, fried rice with beef, fried rice with egg, plain rice, sweet chicken with cashews, and many more dishes were on the menu. I took my usual serving of wheat noodles with braised pork and a dash of rib and yam soup.
Once lunch was over, I got my dorm to change and meet up with a bunch of students. Going in there was an announcement that read, All participants should vacate their rooms ob 1/8/09 before 12:00 noon. This came as a shock to me. I had enquired about the accommodation about 3 times. They has said that we could stay back till the 2nd of August. There was panic among the participants. I decided to go meet the organizers. Things here work a bit differently, the organizers had closed the office and had left. There was no one in the accommodation desk.
I had to find accommodation for myself, so I went to the Yunan University dorm and requested them if I could stay with a friend who had extra space in his room. They plainly refused. I continued to persist and asked they why I was denied a place. They said that they had to permission from their authorities. I volunteered to speak to the authorities. They denied access. In the meantime the person who could decide showed up.
She consulted the man incharge and saw my plight. But the man refused to let me in. after about an hour’s discussion I decided to reach the higher level. I asked for the phone number of the organizing committee, called them and went to meet them.
The staff of the organizing committee, recognized me from my call and said that, “We have just understood the problem we will deal with it”. I requested her to call the Yunan Nationalities Dorm immediately. She did. I was greatly relieved. The guys who accompanied me were surprised to see the efforts that were taken.
It seemed like a success story, they said that it was a good lesson to learn, Not to stop at a blank wall. Also learning to be persuasive. It was a proud moment for the students and for me as well.
Just to double check I went back to my dorm to check if they were actually following the instructions. Sure enough, they were re registering us for the next night. I then went about telling all the people that there was no need to panic, and they could stay. All of them breathed a sigh of relief.
In the meantime, some volunteers had located a cheap but good hotel for me to stay for the night. They called all their contacts and had even arranged to pick up my luggage. Now that I had a room I could stay back.
Next on the agenda was to organize the trip to the stone forest. In fact the Yunan Province is identified with the stone forest. How can we go back without seeing this natural marvel! Joining with a big Bengali group we go a volunteer to help and planned out the entire trip. We were to book a bus and depart early next morning.
Since we had got permission to stay in our dorms we decided to be relaxed, without much packing. I had all my stuff strewn over my room. Since I was very tired I decided to go to bed by 10:30. So I was fast asleep. At the stroke of midnight, I heard my name being called and door being knocked. I opened the door and two volunteers were standing outside, they said, “I am sorry, we just got the information, they said that you have to vacate tomorrow early in the morning and take the luggage with you”. What nonsense, was my immediate reaction. And do you inform someone at midnight about all this. Then what happens to all that we spoke to the authorities.
I went to the Bengali leader Dr Manick Chakaraborthy and spoke to him, we got some volunteers to help us call the organizing committee office, but all our efforts were futile. Our blank wall was just the iron curtain we could not get past.
The problem was to look for ways to store our luggage. After much discussion we decided to wait till the morning and talk with the people responsible.
Getting back to my room, I packed all my stuff and then went back to bed. By now it was 2:00 am.
The greater lesson learnt was the Chinese administration system. They clearly operate on a chain of command and there is no way to bypass them. However persuasive you are they stick to the rules and stand by it. Even if the mistake is theirs.