Going to Chengdu this month? Say "Hi" to Neil Gaiman at the 2007 International SF/Fantasy Conference.

Chengdu is a familiar city to those of us in the international adoption community, since it's home to lots of kids at the Child Welfare Institute (not to mention the pandas and paper made from panda products), and thus visited by lots of adopting parents. Why are the science fiction fans going there? Because Science Fiction World, the largest-circulation genre fiction magazine on the planet, is sponsoring the the conference. And it has been published in Chengdu since 1979 - the only science fiction publication to survive the crackdown on sci-fi in the mid-80s.

Following the conference close on August 27, you could fly over to the World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama, Japan, scheduled to start right after.

Or, you could duck into Korea to do a little freelance diplomatic work (or maybe just education), since international adoption has been a bit of a thing there lately. Korean birth mothers have been protesting the loss of their children to the overseas adoption process. (That link via Ray at the excellent Red Threads blog.) I can't help but wonder if demonstrations like these are in China's future, too. The system is different, of course, and there are different forces at play, but still - it can't feel any different, can it?

Change in the system seems unlikely to come from within the government, which has just this week informed the living buddhas of Tibet that they need permission before they reincarnate. Although I can't help but wonder what reincarnation paperwork would look like (and how would a newly reborn Buddha sign it?), this is really just a symptom of a more serious issue, the way the government in Beijing wants to control the expression of religion throughout the country.

Historically speaking, they have a very good reason for feeling anxious about religion, but still.