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I didn't expect to find myself singing a song from The Little Mermaid to a room full of strangers in Central China, but this country was quickly teaching me to abandon assumption. Earlier that evening, not long after meeting our Tibetan hosts and fellow dinner guests, we had been told to surround the fire pit at the entrance of the restaurant and get familiar by taking hold of one another’s hands. On my right, I'd felt the reassuring warmth of my boyfriend’s hand and on my left, the small and unfamiliar palm of a middle-aged Chinese woman. We were then encouraged to run, as fast as we could while attached in an ungainly circle, around the open flames. This went on for quite some time. Then, as the fire began to die down, the running escalated into leaping over the searing embers. But, it was this moment, about to take to the stage and sing in front of 30 people I didn’t know, that was really testing the limits of my comfort zone. For my audience, I’m sure it was quite an ordinary evening. Karaoke in Asia, it seemed, is as common among friends as going out to eat or drink. We’d done a lot of the latter that evening, and I hoped the bitter local "beer" would give me the courage to not let my audience down. It was clear from the wild response to each performance that this is what everyone had come here for. Our hosts had taken to the stage first. Dressed in finely embroidered dresses and suits and accompanied by beautiful instruments that I could not name, they sang in elongated notes that echoed hauntingly in the small dining hall. Their ballads brought many of the older men in the room to tears. They cried openly, fat drops falling down faces reddened by one too many bowls of the homebrew. These same gentlemen, shirts open and belts loosened, rushed eagerly to the front to provide us with their own gifts of song, each more emphatic than the last. I had a lot to live up to. I took a long sip from my own wooden drinking bowl and set it down among the greasy plates, bones and chopsticks scattered in front of me. I uncrossed my legs from beneath the low table and stood. Sore from the day’s hike, I stomped some life back into my feet as I made my way up to face the room. All eyes turned to me. I closed my own, intimidated by their expectant faces. I took a deep breath and somehow, I managed to open my mouth. And as I stumbled through the first verse about Arial’s underwater cavern, my mind left the dim room. Images of the sapphire shallows and emerald depths of the pools that had brought us all this way into central China ran through my mind. I saw them stretched out beneath the forested peaks and tumbling into waterfalls. I remembered the way the water had reflected the hikers’ raincoats and umbrellas, a rainbow in the crystal clear surface. Making my way to the end of the song, I raised my voice slightly and opened my eyes. I sang to the lakes, to the forests and to those drunk strangers. I sang the only song my own drunken mind could remember the words to and my audience applauded as wholeheartedly as they had for their favourite love songs.