SUNDAY, 28 October. Finally with a bit of down time, I spent the morning at the hotel, catching up with a favorite colleague and getting to know Joey, one of the Chinese students assigned to look after us. Two others joined us for a leisurely hike through a bamboo forest set amongst tea plantations. We enjoyed lunch at an outdoor tea house before going to the art academy for the conference closing ceremonies. Thousands of photos later, we returned to the banquet hall for a farewell feast. It was perhaps more jubilant than the opening dinner. The Malasian contingent, in particular, was in high spirits, wanting celebratory photos taken with everyone. On the bus ride back to the hotel, the group decided to stop off at a night market, where vendors appear out of nowhere to sell their wares on the street. I exchanged glances with three of the other international presenters - they insist on calling us "the scholars" - and we jumped off with them. Lulu, from the Phillipines, had such a successful shopping evening that we had trouble cramming ourselves and the haul in to a mini-taxi to putter back to the hotel. After an arduous search for a bottle of China Great W'All wine, we sat in the lobby with some of the key student volunteers suggesting possibilities for next year's conference in Guangzhou.
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