Huairou District
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Huairou District (Simplified Chinese: 怀柔区; Traditional Chinese: 懷柔區; Hanyu Pinyin: Huáiróu Qū) is situated at northeast Beijing. Huairou District, covering an area of 2,557.3 square kilometers, is divided into seven towns and 14 townships with a population of 260,000. It is 50 kilometers from the city center (about a 1 1/2 to 2 hour drive); 90 percent of it is mountainous area. Its major agricultural products are chestnuts, walnuts,hawthorns,sweet pears, and apricots.
Huairou District is known for being one of the most important water sources in the capital city earmarked for protection. Because of its 69% forest cover, the district is known as the natural “oxygen bar” of Beijing. In addition, it boasts a rich combination of plant, animal and tourism resources. Therefore, Huairou is of great importance to Beijing in ensuring the environmental quality and the ecosystem of the capital city. It is also preferred by residents because of the cleanliness of the air. Beijing itself is known for being dusty and relatively polluted, causing the sky to be a dull gray. However, in Huairou it is common to be able to see the sky clearly for most of the year.
Like Beijing, the weather in Huairou is very cold and dry in the winter, beautiful and warm in the spring, a bit humid in the summer, and just about perfect in the fall. Huairou is well-known for it's next to perfect fall weather and the fall colors seem to be complimented perfectly with the mountainous scenery.
The city center of the Huairou District includes a lake with a walking trail and bike trail for recreation. At the top of the trail there is a pagoda overlooking the lake. It is a great place to sit and think in peace. Huairou also holds two American fast food restaurants (McDonalds and KFC) and a theater for showing movies in the Chinese language. Chinese food restaurants are plentiful and are not hard to find no matter what part of Huairou one is in. The main shopping center goes by the name of "Da Shi Jie" or "Big World." It is a multi-story medium-sized mall with a food court on the top floor. Many of the teens in Huairou enjoy spending time there.
Huairou's most well-known public school is Number 1 High School. It also has a private school called Hong Luo Si International high school (http://www.hlszx.com), which has taken in a number of foreign exchange students over the years. The schools tend to run from around 6:00AM until, for some schools, as late as 9:45PM. The majority of transportation in Huairou is by bicycle. However, many residents also own at least one car.
Huairou has a very good educational system for Chinese students, but does not really cater well to the needs of foreign exchange students. A few of the foreign students that have stayed in Huairou have complained of the lack of proper education in the area but ,overall, have been satisfied. In the 2005-2006 school year there was not any such permanent language course available for the high school level exchange students who stayed there. There was, however, a temporary language course made available for a period of two months, though the class was not at all in-depth. What Huairou does have to offer for foreign exchange students is a safe and friendly environment. The students gain plenty of communicational time with the locals without the interference or temptation of spending time only with other foreigners.
The area does not have a very developed law enforcement system yet life goes on well for most citizens. However, one American exchange student, Julian Velasquez, who stayed in Huairou for 10 months notes a specific incidence occurring past midnight in which he saw a man physically beating his girlfriend on the street below. He woke his host family but they shrugged it off, telling him there was nothing that could be done. Another incident with the same student occurred at the local police station. He and his host sister had gone to the police station to renew his Visa. The police man made a comment stating that his host sister didn't deserve to be alive because she was a woman. These occurrences are not necessarily everyday things in Huairou. They just represent the experiences of one person.
Overall, the Huairou district is a very good place for tourists to visit. It lies about 20 kilometers from a portion of the Great Wall of China. The portion of the wall is labeled as "The Great Wall At Mu Tian Yu." Another tourist attraction is Hong Luo Mountain on which the Hong Luo Temple is located.
In 1995 during the United Nation's 4th World's Women Conference in Beijing, the Civil Society community was forced to meet in the Huairou district, an hour from the official proceedings, leading to a great deal of discontent, as many of the non-governmental actors present felt marginalized. In a tent at the Civil Society Village established especially for poor, grassroots women at the conference (organized by GROOTS International), the Huairou Commission, a registered non-governmental organization with a global secretariat in Brooklyn, NY, was established to ensure that grassroots women would have a voice at subsequent UN conferences and in other development processes.
In 2005 a website documenting the 1995 Huairou NGO Forum, a temporary town of 30,000 women, was launched. (http://www.womenstown.org) The site aims to be a resources for teaching and learning about gender and the built environment and is coordinated and edited by an international collective of women. "Looking at the built form of that town, and the activities within it, one sees many of the issues women around the globe encounter in their everyday lives."
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