We are at the cloth market in downtown Guangzhou. In exchange for me putting on a thousand and one pashminas but not buying any because the patterns ‘aren’t quite right’, we stop off at the electronics market so Wilken can browse the, um, electronics. For ‘a minute or two’.

Six hours and twelve (Mandarin) magazines later I find him writing a list of the assorted pros and cons of the Xbox 360 over the newfangled Wii (a deliberation that is as yet ongoing). Then security boots us out for looking shifty.

Later, at the sunglasses market, I buy several thousand pairs of Ray Ban aviators for the bargain price of twelve cents. Though it’s illegal to both buy and sell such goods, there are uniformed cops relaxing on every corner sipping pineapple smoothies and polishing their own Gucci wrap-arounds, which is disconcerting enough even when you don’t have a suitcase full of booty that could land you a hefty sentence.

Chinese prisons didn’t bode well for Jack Bauer and they won’t for me, so we slip down a back alley, dole out some Armani reflectors to the child gangsters who try to hold us up and leg it back home to the safety of the German compound and diplomatic immunity.