I realized I'd hit that wall last weekend when my girlfriend - who had, as far as I could discern, no apparent previous experience or connections in these matters - casually mentioned that she had to get up early Sunday to help score office supplies for the People's Liberation Army garrison in Guangzhou and it seemed normal.

It was late Saturday night and she and I were preparing for bed.

We'd returned from a "soft opening'' of a new nightclub where the featured entertainment was a sixty-something British expat singing songs like the 1972 Stylistics hit, Stone in Love with You, and Moon River.

Among my tablemates had been two Serbian guys named Velibor and Zoran and a former neuro-linguistics PhD candidate from Seattle who said his family was evenly split between orthodox Jews and old communists - red diaper babies and the like.

Earlier she and I had spent much of the afternoon getting lost trying to find a modern art gallery only to initially emerge at an MTR exit that emptied straight into the middle of an abandoned construction site with no main artery in sight. The exhibition, when we finally found the gallery, featured a series of what I called "angry panda'' paintings - one with a tormented, demonic looking panda eviscerating itself with its talon-like paws and several homoerotic oil studies mocking the Soviet Realism style and featuring East German or USSR hunks "studying'' Marx and Lenin together. In other words, just another average Shenzhen Saturday.

"Tomorrow I have to get up early, maybe 7.30,'' she said. "I have to have Cantonese tea with a friend and some PLA guys who are coming from Guangzhou to talk to him about stationery supply issues.''

Why not? I thought. In the United States people get up early on weekends to hit garage sales. And in China they get up at 7.30 Sunday morning to talk about stationery with the People's Liberation Army.

Life's like that some-times. One rich tapestry of garage sales, stationery and the PLA.

But I paused a minute, before gently querying: "What are `stationery supply issues?'''

"The Guangzhou PLA needs stationery and office supplies. My friend wants to sell to them, but doesn't have any experience.''

"The PLA is the largest army in the world. Don't they have their own official supplier?'' I asked.

"It's just a small item for them. It's just for the PLA in Guangzhou. Not the whole country.''

"So if they need a small amount of cruise missiles for the PLA garrison in Guangzhou, do they go to your friend and you, too?''

"No, of course not. My friend wants to do business with the PLA in Guangzhou but has no idea how to purchase stationery in Shenzhen. The only stores he knows are the ones on the street so obviously the stationery he buys there would be too expensive. So he knows the only thing he can do is buy from manufacturers and he has no idea which ones to buy from.''

"I still don't understand why the world's largest army doesn't have its own office supplies connection. I grew up being afraid of a lot of things, including the `red horde,' the Chinese army. Now I find out that in the 21st century they can't even buy stationery? What was I thinking? Anyway, why does your friend need you?''

"I told him I'd worked for Wal-Mart and had purchased stationery supplies for them. So he wants me to show up like a supplier and talk about stationery in professional words.''

"What's his PLA connection?''

"He used to be in the PLA in Guangzhou and he and the PLA guy are good friends. If someone is going to make money with stationery, why shouldn't an old friend make money instead of a stranger?''

"Okay. So this is about friendship and money?''

"The Shenzhen guy and I had dinner last week and talked about stationery purchasing and I said I might know a stationery supplier that could help him.''

"So you're going to pretend to be a paper supplier?''

"Yes, because I know some technical words for that business. Like the weight of the paper, what brand of pens. The PLA guy will probably ask me about different kinds of printer cartridges, copy machines, staplers, hole punchers, staple removers, correction fluids - all that stuff.''

"So you're going to pretend you're in a business you're not so someone else can close a deal?''

"Yes. It's how people do business in China. And the buyer isn't going to lose any money and we're not going to lose any money, so it's good for both sides.''

She left at about 8am Sunday and returned only about an hour later as I was still snoozing. By American stand-ards, and especially by Chinese stand-ards, it was an unusually short business meeting.

"So what happened? Did your friend get the deal? Will the PLA in Guangzhou have enough stationery?''

"It was a little strange. We hardly talked about stationery. But the tea and dim sum was very good. Something will happen, though.

"All the business in China comes out of meals.''