More than 360 people gathered on Saturday night for the British Chamber of Commerce's annual Burns Night supper. The evening was the traditional celebration of the life and work of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-96).

 

Keeping with tradition involved, as Sam Crispin, chairman of the chamber, put it: "Eating lots, drinking lots and falling over."

 

Burns Nights the world over adhere to a set format and Saturday's at the Equatorial Hotel Shanghai was no different. Angus Robertson, Scotland's unofficial ambassador to Shanghai, pulled out all the stops in his address to the haggis. This came after Louise King's sensual recitation of "Willie Brew'd a Peck O'Maut" and Alan Hepburn's assured "Selkirk Grace."

 

In his "Immortal Memory," Stephen Mercer outlined Burns' colorful life and loves. He also explained what it was that made the man so great and why people all over the world still gather each year to honor his memory.

 

Mercer reflected that: "It is doubtful that Burns would have been able to produce some of the greatest poems and songs about love ever written had they not reflected his many experiences with lassies," before delivering these lines from My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose.

  

"So fair thou art, my bonnie lass,

 

So deep in luve am I

 

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

 

Till a' the seas gang dry.

 

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear

 

And the rocks melt wi' the sun

 

And I will luve thee still my dear

 

While the sands o' life shall run.''

 

Certain uproarious elements of his speech cannot be reproduced in a family newspaper and they rather set the tone for both the Toast to the Lassies and the Response, given by Andrew Thomson and Hannah Loudoun respectively.

 

Burns is famed almost as much for his appetites for women and whisky as for his poetry, providing succor to the lads but adding grist to the lassies' mill.

 

In Burns' defense, Thomson was quick to point out that he was "not so much an alcoholic as a workaholic, with a huge body of poetry and songs that have now been translated into 80 different languages."

 

And as Loudoun pragmatically opined: "(Burns) epitomizes all men, every identifiable male characteristic, bad or good."

 

Virginia Withers, a Burns Night novice, was impressed with the evening. "It was a splendidly enjoyable and pretty enormous gathering and it was a good harmonious mixture of expats and Chinese. I think Rabbie himself would have been proud of such an event."

 

Pipers Tom Fulton and Kevin McDermott were in Shanghai specifically for the Burns Night. They hail a mere four kilometers from Burns' birthplace in Ayrshire. On Burns they were nothing if not loquacious: "So he was a bit a one for the ladies and he took a drink, but come on now, these are small faults in a good man," said Fulton.

 

"When he said 'for aw that an aw that,' he was showing his deep understanding of the human condition, he was basically saying we're all brothers," waxed McDermott. "The world could sure do with some more folks like him just now."

 

Isabella Hu, a Shanghainese Burns Night debutante, said: "Brits come here and moan about chicken's feet and the like and now I'm here eating sheep's intestines! I've had a great night though because I love dancing." There were 16 dances.

 

Returning to Immortal Memory, Mercer said: "Burns left a message of friendship and of love, for all men and women; for all nations and for all times." Before launching into the final verse of Burns' Why Should We Idly Waste Our Prime.

  

"The golden age we'll then revive

 

Each man will be a brother

 

In harmony we all shall live and

 

Share the earth together

 

In virtue trained enlighten youth shall

 

Love each fellow creature

 

And future years shall prove the truth

 

That man is good by nature.''

  

A small mystery was cleared up on Saturday night: What is worn under the kilt? Nothing's worn -- everything is in good working order.

 

(Shanghai Daily January 29, 2007)