'Hail the Convocation in China the Fourth Non-Government Organisation [NGO] Forum on Women!’ reads the huge red banner, beside the road to Huairou, about an hour's drive from downtown Beijing. Others, all written in both Chinese and English, wish ‘A Complete Success to FWCW ‘95!’, exhort the Chinese people to ‘Be a Worthy Host’ to the forum, and repeat the slogan ‘Equality, Development and Peace!’

It is 31 August, and we are in a bus that left our Beijing hotel at 7.30 am, wearing our laminated registration cards on little chains round our necks. We are poring over the 28-page plenary program book, and another of no fewer than 200 pages, each divided into three columns, listing the workshops that will fill the next ten days. They are divided into thirteen themes: Economy; Governance & Politics, Human/Legal Rights; Peace & Human Security; Education; Health; Environment; Spirituality & Religion; Science & Technology; Media; Arts & Culture; Race & Ethnicity; and Youth. They begin at 9 am, finish at 9 pm, and we must choose between the plenary sessions and as many as 132 concurrent workshops at any one time. This will clearly be a marathon.

Since the maps inside the back covers of our books tell us that they are not drawn to scale, the marathon begins with everyone's efforts to find their workshops, in locations ranging from air-conditioned halls in hotels where some of the participants are staying, through circles of metal chairs in a huge, multistoreyed but unfinished (roofless) concrete building labelled ‘Willow Recreation Club (Plenary Hall)’ on the maps, to the huge marquee (borrowed from the Malaysians) called the ‘Golden Pavilion’, an array of smaller marquees and tents set up between the buildings and linked by paths of concrete blocks laid on the ground, and several acres called ‘The Sports Ground’ studded with small round tables and chairs shaded by umbrellas. Chinese students wearing yellow t-shirts marked ‘Translator’ try to help read the maps at the chief access points to each area.

Everywhere there are women, in every variety of national dress, talking, pointing, laughing, hugging, hanging up banners on fences, posting notices on walls — at least 30 000 of us, from 180 countries, and representing more than 3000 NGOs, reports the Independent Daily of the NGO Forum on 8 September.