The secret screening

Last Modified: 07 Aug 2008
By: Lindsey Hilsum

Lindsey Hilsum describes the quirks of reporting in Beijing.

Determined yet debonair, hiding our cameras in enormous backpacks and surreptitiously tucking headphones under our collars, we converged on the hotel. At the assigned moment a text flashed up on our mobiles: Rm 612. Stealthily, we made our move. All 30 of us.

It was, supposedly, a secret screening. The Chinese police aren't keen on films about Tibet, so the location of the hotel had been texted to us only an hour or so in advance. But the organisers hadn't thought how the hotel management might react if a bunch of foreigners arrived en masse and all tried to squeeze into the lift together.

A smartly dressed woman blocked the lift door. "Where are you going?" she asked.

Tireless crusaders for freedom of speech, we confronted her head on.
"Upstairs," we said, boldly.
"Where?"
"Room 612."
"To see whom?"
"Errr..." We were stumped. We didn't know who we were going to see.
"You can't go up if you don't have a name."

We fell back. Always one step ahead of the enemy, I withdrew behind a pillar and called my contact.

"They won't let us in without a name," I bleated. "Who are we going to see?"
"Oh dear," said the mystery voice on the other end of the line. "We never thought of that."

A name was given, so I stepped forward in triumph and told the woman who stood between us and the truth. (Well, between us and the lift anyway.)

"I'll call and see if he wants to come down and see you," she said. "You can't go up."

More journalists arrived. Someone suggested storming the lift. Others ordered coffee. We called up to the room to discover that the cleverer amongst our number had snuck up the stairs and got inside, but the secret police were prowling the corridors, and the management was pleading for the film to be switched off before they got into serious trouble.

We grumbled. Our human rights were being trampled on! It was an abuse of Olympian proportions. Some people drifted away. Others ordered more coffee. Eventually the man with no name came down, got into a taxi and left. "I can't talk," he said. It was all over. There would be no more screening.

A few hours later, an email came through saying that the hotel had been forced to close. Fearless in my pursuit of the story, I rang and asked if I could book a room.

"Sorry," said the voice at the other end. "We're closed."
Aha! The proof! "When did you close?" I enquired, hot on the trail. "Why?"
"We have never been open," she replied.

It was a mystery too far. My 007 skills deserted me. I turned my attention to an even stranger anti-Olympic protest: a man who had filmed himself painting incomprehensible slogans on the walls of his room in another hotel, and had emailed me the explanation in Spanish.