When I was invited to an English Corner in room lit only by candlelight, I should have known that something unusual was going on. The meeting was organized by Rebecca, a freshman at our college, and a real go-getter. Even though her English skills are already vastly superior to her classmates', she still makes heroic efforts to improve them. I was attending the weekly English Corner that she organizes for the students of her department. The candlelight, she felt, made the gathering "more romantic" (her words) and helped the students to relax.

My attendance was a real coup for Rebecca; most weeks there are no native English speakers present. She was not about to let this opportunity pass, and I realized the extent of her ambitions when she told me she was organizing a school-wide English Corner, to take place outdoors around a bonfire. (Flames seemed to be her trademark.) The date was not yet set - part of me thinks she was making this up as she went along - but she wanted me and Deb to attend and would call later to give us the details.

That weekend Rebecca phoned to say that the bonfire was set for the following Friday. We had been having several days of rain, not good for an outdoor event, so she added that if it was still raining on Wednesday, the event would be postponed; the ground would be drenched and the firewood too wet for burning. Still, she went ahead and distributed dozens of bright red, handmade invitation cards, each emblazoned with a golden mylar flame.

Sure enough, it was raining on Wednesday, and on Thursday too. But Friday morning was only overcast, a promising sign, and Rebecca called to say that if the sun came out in the afternoon, we were still on for an 8 PM bonfire. At 7 PM, after a sunless afternoon, Rebecca called again to say, more or less, what the hell, let's go for it anyway.

Deb and I left the house at 7:45, and while walking up to the campus, the heavens opened with rain. We had umbrellas, so we trudged on. When we got to the campus gate, a crestfallen Rebecca did her best to greet us enthusiastically, presenting Deb with a huge bouquet of roses. But she could not hide her frustration and disappointment, and apologized for both the weather and her insistent optimism. "I think I am so *boring*" she said, choosing not quite the right words. "I am always calling you to tell you my plans. I am always saying 'Yes, we will have the bonfire.' Oh, I am so *boring*." Monomaniacal maybe, but not boring.

I didn't expect to be bored by the bonfire either, even if there could be no fire. Parties in China are nothing if not surprising. Rebecca had arranged for us to meet in one of the dormitories, using the office of the campus student union. In addition to our school's regular crew of English Corner attendees she had invited friends from the two other schools in town, the Yunnan Technical College, which is right around the corner from our campus and Yunnan University, the most prestigious school in the province.

Several of the guys from Yunnan University were in a band together, which seemed like a golden opportunity, since at parties like this the guests are expected to provide their own entertainment, usually by singing. But they politely pointed out that they had no guitars with them, so they could not perform.

In steps Rebecca, the human dynamo. Tapping the collective knowledge and contacts of her classmates, she put out the word in the dorm that we needed some instruments. Within minutes, an electric guitar with a portable amp, two acoustic guitars, and a saxophone were delivered to the room. This led to an informal jam session and a solo performance on sax of "A Time for Us" from the film "Romeo and Juliet." Not a bad start, but Rebecca was just getting warmed up.

She launched into an MC shtick that rivaled the best of Miss Pi. Rebecca even did the master one better by enlisting a male sidekick to help her introduce the acts. The two of them had this easy conversational rapport, like co-anchors on a morning news program. Rebecca would start in by announcing something like "Our next performance is from a girl who is a beautiful singer - I think you all know who I mean..." Her sidekick, picking up the cue, would add coyly "Are you thinking of who I'm thinking of?" And then with a dramatic flourish, Rebecca would swing her arm around, pointing to one startled young woman and exclaim "Yes! Please warmly welcome Miss Mei Yin from the Yunnan Technical College!"

The rest of us then applauded madly, and an embarrassed girl, who may not have even been expecting this, stood up and got coaxed into singing a heartfelt rendition of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?". This combination of official warmth and inescapable audience attention was employed repeatedly to squeeze an unplanned performance from many of the collected group of shy amateurs. It even worked on us, as we were pressed into a duet version of Deb's favorite, the Chinese anthem "The East Is Red", which she sang in Chinese as I whistled.

My favorite performance was a Michael Jackson impersonator who danced to a live video of "Dangerous." He had the player turned so that only he could see the screen, which served as a kind of teleprompter, enabling him to mirror every twitch and slide of the original. So while we heard Michael's moaning and the recorded screams of the girls in the audience, what we saw was a tall, skinny Chinese guy, with long bleached hair, wearing clothes that would not have looked out of place on Carnaby Street in 1966. This is the kind of performance that you usually do in front of your bedroom mirror when nobody is looking. (Think of Tom Cruise in "Risky Business".) At the -um- climax of his act, he slipped out of his jacket and insouciantly tossed the garment to the adoring throngs. Except that most of the crowd was utterly indifferent and one of his buddies had to reach out and catch the coat before it hit the ground.

The most imaginative performance had to be the three act play performed by four of Deb's English students. In a classroom exercise built around the song "Old Susanna", Deb had asked the kids act out an imagined reunion between the singer of the song, and Susanna. Well, these girls really took the concept to heart and continued to develop the story weeks after the original assignment. We were about to see the results. "Do you like romantic stories?" asked the chipper MC Rebecca, rhetorically questioning a generally listless audience. Undaunted by the lack of response she insisted that "I think you'll like this one. Please warmly welcome our four sisters in their special play!"

A narrator stepped forward to introduce Act I: Twenty years have passed since our unnamed protagonist has last seen the love of his/her life, Susanna. (The intended gender of the lovers was ambiguous, as all of the actors were woman, but this went unquestioned by the crowd.) In a chance encounter, our hero meets Susanna working as a waitress. At first, she is too ashamed to admit who she is, but eventually confesses that she is his lost love. He is initially ecstatic, but when she adds that she is married, he is devastated.

In Act II, a confidant tells our hero that Susanna's marriage is a disaster. Her husband is a drunken gambler who beats Susanna mercilessly. Our hero is beside himself in outrage. Fate steps in and the husband's wanton behavior leads him to an early death, leaving Susanna widowed. But she is too shattered by the tragedies in her life to accept the love of another man.

Finally, in Act III, the purity of our hero's devotion prevails, and Susanna agrees to marry her one true love. Perhaps as an acknowledgment of the song's American origins, the couple is joined in holy matrimony in an unmistakably Western ceremony, complete with a walk down the aisle and all the requisite "I Do's." As the wedding, and the play, ended, the whole room burst forth with a spontaneous round of "Oh, Susanna."

Not bad for a rainy Friday night. Frankly, I don't see how burning logs could have made this any better.