I look forward to talking with people, and I welcome any opportunity for English conversations. Occasionally, I meet someone and to my surprise, they speak English. But this does not happen very often. The communications breakthrough for me has been my discovery of an institution know as "English Corner." This is similar to the "French Table" or the "Spanish Table" that can be found at many universities. But in China it is more common for people get together and practice their English in a public place. Once I found out about this, I could hardly wait for my chance to go.

The first English Corner that Deb and I went to was in Cuihu Park. It was on a Thursday evening and we got there around 7:30. It had started about half an hour earlier but I thought it would be a good idea to give it a little time to get going. Cuihu Park is pretty big and we were concerned about finding the right place. As soon as we saw the park though, we knew exactly where to go. Outside of one of the entrance gates was a collection of about 200 to 300 Chinese people, clustered in groups of six or eight.

We parked our bikes nearby and began walking towards the crowd, wondering about the proper way to break into a conversation ("Hi, what's your major?"; no we're too old for that. "I'm a Leo, what's *your* sign?"; but they have a different horoscope here. "And what did *you* do during the Cultural Revolution?"; no, too political.) It was needless preparation. Before we could reach the crowd, the crowd reached out to us. About two dozen people peeled off the edge of the mob and surrounded us.

I had not realized how valuable a native English speaker is to an English Corner. Even Chinese who speak well are always self conscious about whether their accent is right, or whether their carefully learned idioms are cliched, or whether that new word they just learned is British English (bad) or American English (good). They were very excited to see us. For these foreign language enthusiasts it was like being at a convention of Elvis impersonators and having Elvis himself show up.

For the next four hours, we talked non-stop. While I am always grateful for conversations with Chinese people, this was perhaps too much of a good thing. It was also disappointing to realize that most of the questions that we were asked were very pedestrian. "Where are you from?"; "How do you like Kunming?"; "What kind of work do you do?"; "Who do you think will win the election?" (this was before Election Day, but... never mind.)

Someone wanted to know what I had studied in school. This meant I had to try and explain my degree in Iconology. When I described it as the study of symbolic, non-spoken communications, one guy became extremely interested. I was momentarily flattered, but he soon went on to tell me that he believes he can communicate with birds and cats and dogs. I took some satisfaction in realizing that this was my first conversation with a Chinese nut.

Keeping this up for four hours was exhausting. There were always two or three conversations going on at the same time. I felt like one of those people playing multiple games of chess. It was hard keeping straight what I'd said, when I said it, and who I said it to. Speaking at the right level was complicated by the varying degrees of English fluency. Some speakers struggled to form a sentence while others spoke clearly and confidently. To be fair, you want to speak with everyone, but in truth, you favor the more adept.

In some ways, it was like being a celebrity. People whom I'd never met were unjustifiably happy to see me. They fell over each other trying to engage me in conversation only to discover that they had nothing to say. They felt *sure* that this chance encounter with me was meaningful and a great opportunity, despite the fact that there we shared almost no common ground. And when they realized that they would have to leave, they wanted some sort of remembrance, or way to extend the relationship. While no one asked me for an autograph, many people asked for my phone number. I got a sense of what famous people are feeling when they grumble about everyone wanting a piece of you.

But on the whole, the ego rewards outweighed the minor violation and the sore throat. I was willing to do this again. I had heard from Leslie, one of the other foreign English teachers, that the graduate students at our college wanted to have their own English Corner. I volunteered to be the fresh meat. We would get together once a week for about an hour and a half. To keep things manageable, she limited attendance to her class only.

On the first evening, about 30 students showed up. As much as I enjoyed being Mr. Popularity, it was really impossible to have a conversation with that many people. But the ones who felt the least confident about speaking have dropped out, and now there is a core of about 12 students, mostly guys, who come regularly.

I usually try to have a topic in mind to start off the conversation. One week, we talked about Chinese festivals. There are a few major national festivals, but many more regional ones. The students at this college come to Kunming from all over the country so I asked them about their hometown celebrations. The most memorable was one described to me by a very shy, awkward young man who struggled to find each word. It's a kind of Sadie Hawkins Day celebration where girls throw buckets of water on the boys they like. It takes place in April which I thought was too early in the spring to get drenched. My response to him was, "I think I could be very cold if I got soaked with water." With a discomfort that came more from embarrassment than lack of language skills, he carefully said, "I think if a girl threw a bucket of water at me, I would be very warm!"

Another week we had an all-male meeting and the topics of discussion drifted into more racy territory. They were trying to find out from me what the English word was for "da kuai." That's literally "big bucks." When I asked them to describe the term they told me that a "da kuai" is a person, usually a man, who spends a lot of money, drives a big car, eats in the best restaurants and generally lives the high life. I told them we'd call that a "big shot." They liked the sound of that, so with the general picture established, we continued on with the details of "da kuai" behavior.

One of the bolder students asked me how we would say "san pei"? This caused a great deal of commotion, with lots of raucous laughter. I asked for specifics. "San" means "three" and "pei" means "to accompany." I still wasn't getting it. "It is a woman," one student volunteered. "She goes with you to eat. She goes with you to dance. And she goes with you to bed." Now I got it. "Mistress" seemed to be the best match. But I also told them about an expression that I learned from a crusty old man in Maine who ran the rooming house where I once lived. Old Laurel Keene used to tease us on Saturday night, asking if we were going out for "dinner, dance, and diddle." I wish I could go back and teach Laurel "san pei;" it's much more diplomatic.

The best story was about something for which I believe we have no word. According to my sources, in Hong Kong (which for these boys, who have never been there and may never go there, represents the height of decadence) it is not unusual for the "san pei" of a "da kuai" to spend her money on a male "san pei" of her own. Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!