China 2006

Over 10,000 products; seven floors of audio; "every manufacturer who matters from the US, Canada, Europe, China, Korea, Japan, and Kowloon;" and more than 30,000 people over four days.

McIntosh was showing a "true 1080p high-def" projector. I said, "I didn't see this at CEDIA."

This one's for Stephen Mejias. GuangZhou Hi-Fi 2006 is seriously into booth babes. I could almost do a series on that subject alone. You may talk among yourselves.

China really likes Christmas. It makes for some odd bedfellows.

This is Ping Gong, one of my hosts and my fellow traveler. At breakfast this morning, he explained to me how he became an audiophile. "It was the Cultural Revolution," he said. "We weren't allowed to study, so we played music and talked. I had a big Russian turntable—mono! And one speaker, of course.

Somehow the gods of travel, who usually enjoy watching me suffer, had one of their rare bouts of whimsey and decided to ruin future journeys by upgrading me to first class.

Than to blog hi-fi from China—or at least, that's what I thought when Original Audio's Ping Gong and GuangZhou Hi-Fi 2006's Zou Dao invited me to attend the largest audio show in the Celestial Kingdom.