Open-Air Building Awaits Women : China: Delegates to forum at world conference will also find widely varying accommodations and police presence in country town north of Beijing.

In the center of this sleepy country town north of Beijing, an official shows off the soaring concrete skeleton of a building that could pass as a high-rise parking garage. With no walls and only half a roof, it has been declared finished and ready for use as a meeting hall this month for a non-governmental forum on women’s issues.

“We don’t want to put up roofs and walls, so it will be very cool in the summertime,” said Cai Jinxi, in charge of preparations for the international forum. Additional railings will keep the 3,000 women, who are expected to meet there, from wandering off the edge, he explained, adding, “Really, it will be no problem.”

The open-air structure is better than holding sessions on a nearby school playground, as originally planned, say organizing committee members. But it is a stark example of the difference in expectations between delegates and Chinese government hosts that has plagued the forum all year.

The meeting of 36,000 women from non-governmental organizations around the world was moved in April, despite objections, from Beijing to this rural resort. Although officials cited “structural problems” with the original venue, the Workers’ Stadium in the heart of the capital, it has been sound enough to host 50,000 rowdy soccer fans in the last month, as well as 6,000 octogenarian veterans for a World War II anniversary songfest.

The real reason for the move, some officials have privately conceded, is that they fear disruptive protests in the middle of the capital. Conference delegates range from prostitutes’ rights advocates to representatives of Tibetan political prisoners.

Hours before officials in Huairou (pronounced WHY-ROH) launched a press tour of facilities Tuesday, police detained six Greenpeace members in Tian An Men Square for unfurling a banner protesting China’s impending nuclear tests. “That’s exactly the kind of thing they’re afraid of and that’s why those women are going to be stuck out there 35 miles away from Beijing,” a Western diplomat said Tuesday.

Many forms of protest and exchange commonly accepted in other countries are against the law in China.

Groups must apply for permission to hold demonstrations or rallies; leaflets with information challenging government policy are prohibited.

Family planning and reproductive rights, which have been key issues in past forums, may prove to be sensitive in China, which has a national one-child policy and where abortion is widely employed as a family planning method.

“Any person going abroad should respect the laws of the country he visits,” Zhao Yuhe, chief of Huairou county, told reporters Tuesday. “China’s laws must be strictly obeyed. Any Chinese or foreigner who violates the law will be treated the same.”

Thousands of security people will be moved into Huairou for the conference, including 1,000 policewomen, officials said.

This once-sleepy farm town, whose claim to fame before the conference was as China’s biggest ginseng producer, is frantically preparing for the largest gathering of foreigners in one place in China.

An estimated 36,000 delegates will come to the Aug. 30-Sept. 8 forum, which overlaps with the Fourth International Women’s Conference in Beijing later in that week.

About 20,000 women will make the hour-plus commute from Beijing, 5,000 will stay in Huairou’s 34 hotels, and 11,000 will be in new apartment blocks that have been completed early for the conference.

Accommodations range from a room in a Chinese-style apartment, with concrete floors, a hard bed and little else, for $10 a night, to the $180 presidential suite in the county’s top hotel, complete with an elaborate sound system and black marble bidet.

Hotel staff members have received special training in courtesy and hospitality, said Pang Yi, vice general manager of Beijing’s Peace Hotel, who has been transferred to Huairou along with dozens of other five-star hotel workers and chefs to help with the conference.

“We teach our front desk people to stand straight and smile,” he said, noting that 1,000 or so English-speaking college students will be on hand to translate.

Employees will not be allowed to say things like “Ask someone else” and “Can’t you see I’m busy? What’s the hurry?” and 48 other brusque but common phrases recently banned in Beijing and Shanghai.