Since I spent all too much of my time at the con either working in Ops, rushing around to find people, or ill in bed I decided not to do a con report of my own, and instead I am publishing the con report of someone WINOLJ. It is quite long I'm afraid, and I have done my best to translate it from the original Chinese.


My earliest memories are of the Wenzhou Light Industrial Factory No. 2 in Ningbo. I and my fellow comrade lanyards were part of the record-breaking total production for the 10th Five Year plan period produced that day by the heroic workers of that Ningbo factory. We lay in great piles, debating among ourselves how we might best put into practise the spirit and purpose of a pure communist party lanyard. Those of us manufactured earlier in the day counselled the younger, more reckless lanyards from the afternoon shift on adherence to the principles laid down in the latest Circular On Strengthening Management of Engineering Quality of Garment Accessories. Within hours our patient wait was over and we were batched into cadres of 100, crated and began our bumpy journey from the factory. After a brief discussion amongst the cadre, it was my honour to be selected as cadre leader for the journey, and so, to keep spirits raised I led them in a song,

The noble spirit of Taihang Mountain is forever,
The brave warriors, like the clouds, are singing in the gale...

As my comrades took up the song, I caught the scent of the sea upon the air and knew that our destiny would lie far from the shores of our native China.

The hold of the ship seemed cavernous, filled with crates from all over Ningbo. We were stacked next to a crate of generic flash MP3 players. Already they were playing decadent, pirated Western Pop music to each other, speculating on the size of the homes they would end up in, and the wealth of their new owners.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves!" I cried, "You were not manufactured to enjoy yourselves, you were manufactured for a purpose", but they jeered, "You are just a common black lanyard, an simple piece of braided nylon". Quietly I said, "And Lei Feng was just a simple man". There was a shamed silence from them as they recalled the story of the peasant hero Lei Feng, the revolutionary screw that never rusts. "Xiang Lei Feng tongzhi xuexi" (Learn from Comrade Lei Feng) one of them whispered, "Yes", I said, "What Mao said of Lei Feng then is true today. You should live to serve the People and Communist Party of China. You are setting off on a great journey for a great task. Do you see the destination stencilled on your crate?", of course, they could not, they were in the crate, "It says Wal-Mart. Yes, you are to be taken into the heart of American Imperialism, where your cheap price and good quality will lead to the inevitable destruction of Western manufacturing industry". My fellow lanyards cheered, and we heard no more from the MP3 players on the remainder of our long journey across the Pacific, except for occasional bars of The East Is Red.

Landfall came after many uncomfortable days, we were in America, and we bid goodbye to most of our comrade products from Ningbo, while my crate of fellow lanyards was loaded onto a train which headed east. "Where are we headed?" my cadre asked me, but I did not know. "It matters not" I told them, "As long as we carry out our duties with resolution and discipline and in accordance with communist principles we will prevail". After many hours we were unloaded, and I could see we had reached the town of Branford, Connecticut, and the warehouse of a company called Just Lanyards. Over the weeks, bag by bag, our comrade lanyards were sent off, some to sales meetings, some to colleges, some unlucky fellows to an IBM marketing event, until there were were only 6 bags left, my cadre and 5 others. The day came when it was our turn, all 600 hundred of us were scooped up, packed and posted. Through a loose corner of the package I spied where we were going, Rochester, New York. "What is in Rochester?" my comrade lanyards asked me, "It is a large manufacturing city, home of Kodak, and many other optics companies on the bank of Lake Ontario". One of the other lanyards piped up, "That is near to Canada, perhaps we will be sent there. It is almost a communist country", "Only comparatively" I replied dryly.

Surprisingly we were not delivered to a business, but to a modest family home, and more surprisingly still, we were re-packaged and posted again in separate packets. I strained to read the address before we were packed. "We are leaving America!" I told my comrades, "We are going to Britain", "But isn't that just another Capitalist country?" one of my comrade lanyards wailed. "Fear not" I said, "The workers and revolutionary masses threw off the reactionary shackles of their conservative government in 1997 and put in place a socialist government under the wise leadership of Premier Tony Blair. With luck we will be sent to a union conference, or some fraternal organisation". Before long we were in the hold of an aircraft and heading across the Atlantic. As the aircraft climbed it grew colder, and we huddled together for warmth. "How will we survive this cold?" a frightened lanyard said. Despite the cold I put on a jaunty voice, "This is nothing comrade. On the Long March Mao's First Front Red Army had to climb the Great Snow Mountain (Chiachinshan). Blanketed in its eternal snow, over chasms and glaciers, pierced with the cold of 3 million white jade dragons as the Great Helmsman wrote, yet they crossed it, and joined up with the Fourth Front Army for the battle to come". This heartened them, particularly as I did not mention that we know this from Lin Piao, the official historian of the Long March, who had both of his legs amputated due to frostbite on that climb.

This journey at least was short, and within hours we were landing at Heathrow airport, and scant days after that, completed the 28 kilometers to our destination. We lay in our bags, pensive, waiting. What would the event be? Another journey by car though snow followed, and finally my comrades and I were taken from our bags. As we were handed out, one-by-one I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was if we had fallen among some alien race, and my discipline wavered, but among the strangeness I saw people of many backgrounds greeting each other fraternally, and workers who toiled not for gain, but for their comrades, and I recalled the motto of Lei Feng, "To live is to serve the people - live to make others happy". Clearly the revolutionary spirit of Lei Feng lived here, despite the strangeness of the people, and so I became the happy worker lanyard of a Redemption member. Now we are off to an educational item called "Realism in Slash". I do hope slash is something that is true to the spirit of a rustless revolutionary screw.