In the sandbox in my back yard, like most American children, I too thought that if I dug a hole deep enough, I just might end up in the Orient. The fantasies of what I might find were filled with bustling rickshaws toting red-umbrella-ed geishas, orient-silk’d emperors sitting in gold-flaked thrones in Shaolin temples, Chinese-starred ninjas battling Kung Fu samurai while their fu-man-chu mustached masters watched atop spiring greed-jaded mountain tops. When I got older I discovered my fantasies were ever so slightly askew and that getting to the orient did indeed require digging a deep hole, however a financial…