Several months ago the China Law Blog did a great post on how tanning salons are taking off in China.

Last week the Wall Street Journal did its own piece on this topic (click here for the article). This China Law blog post and WSJ article are definitely worth checking out — it’s amazing to see how a great business opportunity appears to be developing in China due to the increased standard of living for China’s urbanites. Anybody want to invest in some tanning salons with me in China??

When we are in Shanghai in particular, you will see many women wearing visors to shield their faces from the sun and/or carrying an umbrella to do so. Clearly, most upper class Chinese (currently) have a different view of the merits of UV rays from the sun than do Californians.

As an aside, I have asked one of my good friends in China (Dr. Wu) to be on the lookout for a tanning salon we might visit where we can spend a few minutes with a small business entreprenuer asking him about what he/she does and how he/she does it. This would be a very different type of visit than one of our visits to a multinational firm and could offer us a good balance and a very different perspective. However, do be aware that I think it will be a longshot for me to pull this off — e.g., finding a tanning salon with enough space to comfortably house 40 people for a 30 minute chat sesssion does not likely exist in all of China and I assume you don’t want to stand out on the street to talk to such a business owner (and/or it will likely be difficult to get him/her to come to our hotel and present).

On a different note, no visit to China can be complete without visiting a karaoke club. Yet, this Wall Street Journal article reminds us that doing so will likely result in a copyright violation (at least for the club owner and/or the DJ); although it does appear that the Chinese government is doing a better job of cracking down on this no-no.  I am sure that no karaoke clubs in the US run afoul of copyright laws in this regard! (Yes, that was said tongue-in-cheek.)