The Only Thing that Sucked about My Trip to China

Anyone who does business in China warns you to avoid Baijiu. And yet, there I was Wednesday night at a fancy restaurant with high-backed Alice-in-Wonderland-style chairs having this conversation:

"Do you want to get a bottle of wine?"

"Well, you live in California, so any wine we get won't be very good for you. We could do baijiu-- you've never had the good stuff."

"Yeah! I haven't. And I haven't had any this trip. Let's do it!"

Let's fast forward to the next morning where I wake up in my hotel with a brutal, brutal headache. I looked to check my email. "Hey! Where's my laptop?" Must still be in my backpack. Um....Where's my backpack? Just as the cold sweat really started to break out I looked over to see my clutch purse sitting on my table. I lunged for it-- YES! Passport and credit cards are there. So where the hell was my backpack containing my camera, lenses, tape recorder, laptop, notes, flip cam and nearly everything else I use to remotely do my job?

As security camera footage would reveal later-- in the front seat of a cab. And perhaps now distributed all over China for everyone to enjoy. Just call me Gadget Santa.

There's a lot that made this not as horrible as it sounds:

1. Mr. Lacy had backed up the computer before I left and I have two other laptops at home.

2. Did I mention I still had my Passport???? Had that too been left in the backpack-- THAT would have been a nightmare to replace with all the Visas. 

3. It was self-inflicted. I'm the idiot who drank the Baijiu and forgot to pick up the bag after I put it in the front of a cab. There's really no one to be mad at but me.

The hotel-- as always-- was incredibly sweet in trying to do a range of things to recover it and loaning me a Dell for the rest of my trip. I don't mean to look a gift laptop in the mouth, but MY GOD Windows is just a horrible operating system! How do you people get anything done with those?

Of course, it wasn't the equipment that was the big loss-- it was all my notes and all the writing I did over two weeks in China, which was substantial. A lot about the book really started clicking on this trip and I wrote more than usual when I travel. I also had almost finished two BusinessWeek columns and had sketched out/half-written about five TechCrunch posts.

Can I recreate most of that? The TechCrunch posts will be the hardest. Those posts tend to be more focused on a particular company, versus 50,000-foot analysis, so they suffer most from my notes being gone. Rewriting my BusinessWeek columns will take a day or so, but doable. My book stuff? It worries me. But I think the biggest breakthrough over the last two weeks was figuring a lot of the structure, framework and themes out. It'll suck up time, but I think I can actually write it better the second time. 

Despite all this, it was with a heavy heart that I left China this morning. I love the electricity of the scene and the kindness and ingenuity of the people there. Thanks so much to everyone who made the trip unforgettable and if we didn't get to hang out this trip, hopefully next time. I can't wait to go back in March. Up next: India.