Admission into the Beijing Film Academy is often viewed as a sure-fire way of becoming a celebrity because of the many movie queens and kings it has minted. But can it produce a cross-talk (xiangsheng) star?

On the sixth day of the Chinese New Year, I was invited to a reading of the Broadway musical Rent. What a strange time for a rehearsal, I thought. The streets in Beijing were almost empty and the buses that ran had few passengers.