Many of my overseas friends have made it a point over the years to buy as many snuff bottles as they could find when traveling to China to give as gifts back home.

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Yangzhou, where Marco Polo once served as a municipal official, has a history of 2, 500 years, dating back to the Spring and Autumn Period in China (771 to 403 BC) when it was called Guangling.

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Of course, a growth rate of 7% is hardly a disaster, and Rothman still counts himself firms in the optimist camp when it comes to investing in China, provided you back the right horse.

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That honor goes to finding out, back during my first stay in China in the mid-1980s, when glasses were in short supply, that spectacles were distributed with preference given to those who had attained a high level of education, the notion being that academics and teachers needed to read for a living.

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When it comes to commercial real estate investment flows China still takes a back seat in Asia to Japan and Australia, whose markets have better transparency, more experienced investors and deeper inventory.

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Gunpowder may date back as far as the 4th century, when it was invented in China--perhaps by someone trying to mix sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter into medicine.

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