Smartphones were always destined to take off in China. On a surface level, there’s an inherent love of gadgets, the shiny and new. More importantly, it’s China’s leisure activities that really lend themselves to surfing on the Samsung. Playing sports and going to the pub aren’t as common as in most Western countries, however popular activities such visiting shopping malls have seen the smartphone become the must-have accessory. China’s consumers spend a lot of time at home in the evenings and weekends, but it’s generally not out in the garden and increasingly not watching TV – China’s middle class are online 34% more than in front of a TV.

Mention Shanghai to a Beijinger, and there’s a good chance they’ll scoff. Talk about Beijing to Shanghainese, and there may also be some jeering. Northern Chinese like noodles, southerners have a preference for rice. Travelling between regions in China, differences are evident in people’s appearance, diet and aspects of their culture, as well as climate variations. Whilst most of us are aware of this, curiously a lot of our marketing efforts still treat China as one big homogenous land, or at best, separates sophisticated high tier city consumers from the smaller ones.

Welcome to this week's skinny on China. Legend has it, about 1200 years ago, a goat herder in the Ethiopian Highlands noticed his animals getting frisky after eating berries from a coffee plant. Intrigued, the herder picked some fruit and took them to a nearby holy man, who wanted nothing of it, tossing the berries into a fire. But the sweet scent of the roasting coffee soon became irresistible, and the men raked up the embers, grounded and dissolved them in hot water, creating the first cup of coffee. By the 17th century, the good drink had spread up the Nile to north Africa and across to the Arabian Peninsula, before making it’s way to Europe and then much of the world. But not to China.