"Maybe you would like to join?" Miss Pi impishly asked in English.

I thought about it. In the fall, John and I had attended a choral competition among the students from each department. I assumed this would be something like that or the women's basketball league in which Miss Pi plays, with administrative staff competing against various academic departments.

"That sounds like fun," I replied. "I think it would be a good way for me to learn Chinese songs."

A look of dismay momentarily flashed across her face. "But you would have to sing very patriotic Chinese songs," she pointed out.

"That's okay. I already sing 'The East is Red.'"

"Well, if it does not bother you, I will check with the Secretary-General to make sure it is permitted for you to sing. We have not had a foreigner participate before."

I suspected the Secretary-General would get a big kick out of having a capitalist sing in the Communist Chorus, and apparently I was right, because he quickly issued an approval.

Then I started wondering if maybe it would be more appropriate for me to sing with the Foreign Languages Department instead of the administrative staff, so I wandered over to Zhou Xueying's apartment to see if she would be participating. Her singing is so excellent that I have jokingly told her that if she comes to America, she doesn't have to worry about seeking a job because the Metropolitan Opera will be waiting for her at the airport. To my astonishment, she hadn't been invited.

"What do you mean you weren't invited?" I asked. "How is that I can sing and you can't?"

"This is a very important competition. It is not just within our college. It is for the whole province, so only the very best singers in the entire danwei (college community) are invited. Maybe they had too many in my vocal range," Zhou Xueying said, politely omitting any mention of the fact that she and I are both altos. "Do you know the song 'Wo Ai Zhongguo' ('I Love China') they are singing?" She launched into an intimidatingly beautiful operatic rendition that I doubted I would ever be able to duplicate.

If Zhou Xueying wasn't good enough, then I wasn't even close to being an acceptable singer. I started to worry. The second thing that concerned me was that the lyrics would be written in Chinese characters. What if there were just too many unfamiliar characters?

On the first night of practice, I sat between Miss Pi and a genetics teacher, Zhu Jing, who is one of my students. When I received the music, I couldn't believe my eyes. Never mind the Chinese characters--most of which I could actually read--it wasn't written in any musical notation I could recognize. It looked like a combination of numbers and Morse code! Miss Pi explained that the numbers correspond to do-re-mi-fa-so and the dots and dashes indicate rhythm. Suddenly, I had to learn yet another system of writing!

Our first song was the Chinese equivalent of "America the Beautiful." It extols the sun rising over the sea, the heroic mountains covered with livestock, the dense fields of flax and the abundant birds that fill the sky. Both Chinese words for river, "he" and "jiang" frequently turn up.

My colleagues did indeed have remarkable voices and seemed incredibly concerned with the accuracy of pitch. However, I couldn't help noticing a distinct lack of attention to rhythm. Our amateur conductor was not especially good at signaling entrances and endings, so we had big problems coming in together at the right time.

This is where I thought I could be helpful. Since I seemed to be more confident about rhythm than pitch, I thought perhaps I could bravely lead the alto section into our parts and then let the excellent voices take over. In retrospect, this seems like amazing chutzpah, but really, I've gotten quite bold in China. For the first few nights, I would boldly launch into "Jiang liu ting zhi paoshao.." (the river's unstoppable flow cries out...) and "He shan zhuang li" (the rivers and mountains are magnificent). After a few nights of that, I heard my comrades in the alto section come in at what I thought was the appropriate beat, but the more I listened, the more I didn't think they were singing exactly the same words that I was. I examined the lyrics carefully, and realized I had mixed up the two words for "river" so I was loudly leading us with "He" when I should have been singing "Jiang," and vice verse. So much for my leadership in the Communist Chorus!

One of the big attractions of being a Communist Chorus member is that the Party bought us costumes. I had high hopes of receiving an elegant silk qipao, but then realized that the traditional styles probably weren't politically correct for the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. Maybe we would get uniforms from the People's Liberation Army? Although that would be disappointingly drab, it definitely had exciting potential for future Halloweens in Cambridge. As the weeks passed, I learned that our outfits would be custom made by Kunming's premier dressmaker, and suddenly the wives of prominent Party officials started showing up at practice.

Our dresses cost a whopping 350 yuan, a princely sum for Chinese clothing. But the more I heard about them, the more they sounded disappointingly like very traditional American bridesmaid dresses. Still, I thought, after the event maybe I could have the puffy sleeves removed and the skirt shortened. If the fabric was a nice as everyone said, maybe I could still get something wearable out of it.

Alas, the night they arrived, my hopes crashed. The dresses were hot pink satin with sparkly silver braid around the sweetheart necklace. A satin rosette adorned the waist and a lavender one sprouted awkwardly from the shoulder. Given that most chorus members were in the 35 - 55 year old range, the style was completely inappropriate, not to mention unflattering to sagging bosoms and thickening waistlines. The more I looked at the dresses, the more I realized that they were not bridesmaid dresses, they are what American 6-year olds wear on Halloween when they want to be princesses!

I hid my dismay as my comrades tried on the garish garments. They swished and swung the long skirts in front of the wall-length mirror, grinning shyly at their reflections. Gleefully giggling, they tied each others' sashes and fluffed the voluminous sleeves. Suddenly I realized that these were women who never had pink organdy birthday party dresses when they were five-year old girls nor satin prom dresses when they were 16. Many of them probably wore blue Mao suits to their own weddings.

Our first performance was part of what the college called an evening party (wan hui). In the States, we would be more likely to call it a talent show. It took place in the cafeteria/auditorium of the college, so 90 minutes in advance, we all took the shuttle bus up the mountain to campus. Most of the women were already wearing make-up, but we carried our costumes. Upon arriving, our leader announced that the women should help the men put on make up. One of the sopranos immediately suggested that I be the make-up mistress since I clearly knew more about make-up than did anyone else. I'm not sure if this is because I am the only woman on campus who routinely wears lipstick and blush, or if make-up is believed to be one of the areas, like basketball and baking bread, in which westerners excel. In any event, I protested, "Tai bu hao yisi! " ("I'm too embarrassed!") and fled with Miss Pi and Zhu Jing to the unoccupied waiban office to change.

Even though it seems like there is no privacy whatsoever in China, my friends were surprisingly modest when it came to changing dresses. In fact, Miss Pi hid behind a file cabinet, denying me the opportunity to check out the extremely expensive French bra she informed us she was wearing. Fully garbed in pink satin, Miss Pi then whipped out her make-up bag and proudly showed me her lipstick. "It's...(something incomprehensible)" When I professed ignorance, she impatiently said, "Deborah! It's from your own country! I think you must know it because it is very famous." Then she handed me the object of her pride, a Maybelline lipstick.

When we joined the rest of the chorus, the men's heavily powdered faces were were almost unrecognizable; their brightly rouged cheeks were reminiscent of Bozo the Clown and their ruby lips rivaled those of of Snow White. We lined up by height and once more I was flabbergasted. Even in China I am among the very shortest! How is it that even here I am the third shortest alto? "It's your flat shoes," said Zhou Xueying later. "If you wore heels like everyone else you would not appear so short."

Even though our performance that night received the kind of thunderous applause and spontaneous cheering one associates with rock stars, the powers that be decided there were a few problems. One was that the women's hair did not all look alike. Given that some women had short hair while others had long, and one particular alto didn't have even remotely straight hair, I don't know why that was a surprise--or a problem. We were encouraged to have our hair done professionally. Since I had happily made it through 44 years of my life without having my hair done, I pretended I didn't catch that comment.

But that night, after rehearsal, Miss Pi called me to arrange a trip to the hairdresser.

"Is this required?" I asked.

"It is not exactly required, but it is a strong suggestion. Besides, it will be fun. We have so few occasions to have our hair done."

The afternoon of the provincial competition, Miss Pi, Zhu Jing, and I set off for the hairdresser's. Five years of living in Japan have give Zhu Jing a fastidiousness that must make living in China very challenging. She vetoed Miss Pi's initial choice of the local hairdresser and led us to a truly upscale salon which she pronounced, "Very clean." Indeed, it was cleaner than my Chinese dentist's office.

"What style would you like?" asked Miss Pi.

"I have a choice? I thought our hairstyles had to look alike. I don't know, something simple," I said.

The salon had chairs and mirrors for twelve clients, and a staff of five. However, in a classic model of the Chinese labor force, only one staff person could actually style hair. While the expert teased and sprayed my hair, another young women held the hair spray and a third held the bobby pins. Another observed, while the fifth simply watched TV. I emerged with a very acceptable, although heavily lacquered French knot, and when I saw some of the styles that were created after mine, I felt pure gratitude. Needless to say, our hairstyles still did not resemble each other.

Given all the preparations, the performance itself was anticlimactic. We performed well enough and received a score of 9.6 out of 10--respectable, but not a winning score. Miss Pi was devastated. On the drive home, she listened to the tape John had made of our performance, trying to pinpoint our flaws.

I had never expected us to win. I found the whole experience to be even more interesting than I'd expected and victory didn't matter to me at all. You see, I'm really pinning my hopes of triumph on the two pieces of embroidery I've entered in the Workers Union Women's Handicraft Competition. Stay tuned for *that* announcement.

In case you think I am exaggerating the unfortunate design of our dresses, you can check them out for yourself below. All you curious fans of Miss Pi can also get a glimpse of the woman who has so captured your imaginations! She's the tallest one in the picture and Zhu Jing is on my other side.