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Boxun (Chinese website): Beijing Students Travel to Hebei Province in order to find Internet Access
(Clearwisdom.net) Most of the underground Internet cafes have been eliminated in Beijing since the city began a
crackdown on them in June of this year. As a result, local students have been pouring into the
Langfang District of neighboring Hebei Province to visit the Internet cafés there. The district is
located about sixty kilometers (about thirty-seven miles) from Beijing. Taxis are always waiting at
the long distance bus station to transport visiting students to the Internet café street, which has
become a popular destination. This journalist covertly visited the street where the Internet cafés are located, in a suburb of
Yanshan City. There were six or seven Internet cafés within one hundred meters (about one hundred
yards) of one another. After visiting three cafés in a row, the journalist could not find a
vacancy. One café owner told the journalist that quite a lot of his customers were students from
Beijing. The largest Internet café on the street had about one hundred computers. Most of the
customers were from high schools, while a few were elementary school pupils. A young lady sitting next to the journalist said that she was a high school sophomore in Beijing,
and was fond of chatting on the Internet. Because the Internet cafes in Beijing had been forced to
shut down, she could not find any place to have fun during the summer break, so she came here after
hearing that people could access the Internet in the Langfang District. (edited from Boxun) Posting date: 8/28/2002 |