The GoKunming Team

Chris A former pizza cook, recovering business journalist and avid cyclist, Chris first came to Kunming as a traveler in 1999. After living in Shanghai for three years, he succumbed to his dreams of Yunnan and in 2004 moved to Kunming. Chris's posts >>

Matthew Matthew handles the techie stuff on GoKunming. After much umming-and-ahhing, he moved from Shanghai to Kunming in October 2007. He's never worked outside greater China, having embarked upon self-imposed exile from the UK in the summer of 1998. When he's not worrying how much he can afford to spend on his next machine, he's likely to be poking about with HTTP pipelining, bash scripts, or planning some as yet unrealised PHP/MySQL masterpiece. Matthew's posts >>

Xiao Lu A local Kunmingnese, Xiao Lu (aka Wendy) likes the blue sky and warm sunshine of Kunming. She's interested in literature, music, art, travel, and partying with friends. Xiao Lu's posts >>

Former GoKunming Team

Chase A college student studying Chinese and Economics at Bates College, Chase Larson desperately needed to improve his Chinese. In a search for a Chinese city in which to spend the summer, he stumbled upon gokunming.com and the rest is history. Chase's posts >>

James Prior to moving to Buenos Aires, Argentina, James Dunham was a correspondent for GoKunming. Before joining GoKunming he reported for a student newspaper, The Badger Herald, and contributed to political campaigns. In 2004 he directed Madison, WI media coverage for The New Voters Project, a nonpartisan effort to galvanize the youth electorate. The following year he helped prepare a New York City mayoral candidate for editorial board interview. James has lived in Kunming since the fall of 2006, enrolled in Mandarin classes at Yunnan University. He studied political science and Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. James's posts >>

Tom Born in the year of the Dog, Tom Pellman made the move from his native Indiana to what he likes to consider the Indiana of China, Henan Province, in 2005. Sometime during the bleak, gray Henan winter, he plotted his escape to Kunming. He landed here after a summer excursion to Pakistan in August of 2006. An anthropology and philosophy graduate of Indiana University - Bloomington, Tom spent a considerable time of his enrollment abroad, studying everything from Mayan archaeology in Belize to Ancient Roman theatrical executions in Rome. These first tastes of travel were intoxicating; wanderlust ensued. He has meanwhile contributed to such online travel magazines as: Glimpse Abroad, Bootsnall and Travel Mag. In Kunming, he divides his time between studying Chinese during the week, teaching English on weekends and contributing to GoKunming. He's also been known to play a few music gigs around town with his trusty $50 guitar. Tom's posts >>