Do American Brains Stop Working in China?

The two biggest thing our "tour guide" has been promoting during our trip to Guangzhou are the foot massages at China Hotel ($12USD for 1 hour - and I have heard they are awesome) and the electronics market where you can get Adobe Photoshop for just 10 yuan (about $1.25 US) and "Brokenback Mountain" for 5 yuan. Today is the day we go to the electronics market. I've got to laugh. 95% of our agency's clientel is from LA or SF. We are adopting this countries children with salaries made from the movie and software industry - yet they just can't stop telling us about our opportunity to buy stolen software and movies. What's even better is that somehow the word "piracy" doesn't seem to translate quite so cleanly to STOLEN once you get over here.

During breakfast this morning a fellow mom - who knows I work for Adobe - told me that she wasn't going to be able to make it to the electronics market today but wanted to know if I could pick her up a copy of Photoshop when I was there. HELLO???

On a related note we heard a story on CNNi this morning about Beijing protesting an EU companies petition to trademark "Not Made In China". Beijing claims that such a trademark infringes on their "Made in China" trademark and will damage the perception of their country and impede growth of their industry. Funny how they feel when the shoe is on the other foot, eh?

Under 24 hours until take-off.