The US writer Hunter S Thompson once wrote of the "high and beautiful wave" of optimism building in the 1960s on the west coast of the US and that some years later, standing on a hill in Las Vegas and with "the right kind of eyes", it was almost possible "to see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back".
An appropriately placed observer in Hong Kong or Tokyo might now see a similar phenomenon at work in Asia, for the wave of enthusiasm about the continent...
