Once, more than 20 years ago, while prowling the capital's streets as a reporter for news leads, I was invited by a downtown communal public house to cover what it claimed to be an innovative project.

That was a period of widespread economic growth and blossoming entrepreneurship. I thought I had come across all kinds of crazy business ideas. Yet I was startled when the owners told me that they wanted to fold up their struggling old bathhouse business.

On its site, they planned to build a much more profitable mineral water factory, using the hot steamy spring that flowed into dingy pools. They needed media publicity to attract investment, ideally from a Western company with deep pockets, while trying to find ways to prove the water containing various minerals was drinkable.