Here's the latest from David Temple and the China crew:

The China Search Marketing Tour had a free day and went shopping. Talk about "shop til you drop". Shopping in China is very exciting since it involves a lot of time haggling over prices. The tour members have become quite adept at this sport and we shared our "war stories" over lunch and dinner.

Several staff members of a Chinese Internet company accompanied the tour and helped us develop our shopping skills. We lunched at a restaurant that was modeled after what you would find in the Ming dynasty. Dinner was especially interesting as it included a show of some minority tribes. We even saw the only male belly dancer in China (and perhaps the world for that matter).

The next day we went to the Great Wall. The views as you climbed the wall were incredible and the higher you climbed the more of the wall you could see. Since we wanted to get in a full day we took the tobogan back down which was quite a thrill particulary with the squealing brakes that seemed like they would go out at any moment. Our next stop was the jade factory were we learned how to tell fake jade from the real stuff and saw several large jade carvings including a sailboat the was about ten feet long and six feet high.

Afterwards we hit another silk factory and everyone went crazy over the silk comforters. They seem to have several advantages over their down counterparts and the prices were incredible. (No bargaining here much to the dismay of the tour members who had honed their skills).

Our guest of honor at dinner that night was Mr. Xu from the Ministry of Information and a leading expert on information technology. He presented David Temple and Ian McAnerin a signed copy of his recent book. The tour now heads to Shanghai for further adventures.

The excitement never ends... David's in Nanjing now for the conference, but promised to send more as he has time.