"The English level is very high for some of the people here. They are fluent and knowledgeable," Selent says about the attendees.

Among the regular participants, there are teachers, lawyers, doctors and even college professors. Many come from the other end of the city for the weekly discussion.

"He is erudite," Zhao Xinrong, a retired English teacher who has attended the activity for years, says of Selent. "We all call him a walking encyclopedia."

Selent studied mining and mineral process engineering in Vancouver. He used to work as an engineer in the first mining joint venture in China in the late 1980s in Shanxi province and left in 1991.

But it was not until 2007, when Selent come to China the second time, that he learned about the English corner.

"I was just here for a few months and then my young cousin came on a cultural exchange," Selent remembers of his first encounter with the English corner. "I went to see him in the Chaoyang Cultural Center, and as I was sitting in a McDonald's next to the center waiting, a gentleman came up to me and asked me if I was going to the English corner."

Curious to discover the meaning of an "English corner", Selent made his way to the English corner at Chaoyang Cultural Center, and later some people invited him to the one at Tuanjiehu Park.

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