Latest Comments

• • August 22, 2011
  • Cycling from Kunming to Dali Old Town
    

    Excellent writeup. I've been meaning to do this ride for years.

• • June 14, 2011
  • Kunming in 1945: The photos of Paul R Burch
    

    Robert,

    Thank you for sharing these with us. They're great.

    Incidentally, those barracks are still standing. They're set back a bit from the road on Xichang Lu just outside the Xizhan Overpass. It's been taken over by a school and given a horrible paintjob...

• • April 14, 2011
  • Getting Away: Shuhe
    

    Didn't that old guy used to have a monkey?

• • January 19, 2011
  • Kunming Mayor Zhang Zulin to serve second term
    

    Actually, they usually only list ethnicity when the person is not Han, or gender when the person is female. I don't know why they listed his ethnicity there. I guess they're used to listing it for everyone in Yunnan.

• • December 29, 2010
  • Interview: Deng Bin
    

    "we looked at several places in Beijing and Shanghai and found that mixing creatives' office space with performance spaces and galleries made things too chaotic and often resulted in creatives moving out."

    That's so true. 798 was first filled with artist studios, then the creative companies and galleries moved in. The bars, shops and cafes came last.

    798 is very active now, with dozens of exhibitions opening every weekend, lots of music events and plenty of places to grab a bite to eat. But there are only a few artist studios left, and most of the creative companies are gone.

Latest Forum Posts

• • January 30, 2012
    
  • Forums > Living in Kunming > WTF!! DD Dragon.
    

    Liumingke1234, thanks for the shout-out. I do think that prices are depressed, and the business mentality here is partially at fault. But I live in Beijing now, and being back in Kunming for the holidays, enjoying the clean air, warm sun and beautiful clear skies, I've had a new insight into the matter.

    A big part of the issue is the foreign population. Kunming is very comfortable, and provides a pretty good quality of life. As a result, many foreigners love to move here, and worry about work later.

    While tons of foreigners arrive in Beijing and Shanghai every day, chasing the perceived gold mine, the ones here are slightly different. People come here because they like the place, and they then try to find an excuse (teaching, studying Chinese, starting an organic farm...) to stay here after the fact.

    As a result, the schools have it easy. While experienced teachers argue that their services are worth more money, and that the cost of living has increased, the schools know that they can easily fill the position with the next sucker who walks in the door.

    We can try to tell the newcomers to stick to minimum salaries or prices in negotiations, but that never works 100%.

    Contrast that to other, less well-endowed cities. "You want me to live in Zhengzhou? Sorry, that's gonna cost you at least 15,000 a month..."

• • January 22, 2012
    
  • Forums > Living in Kunming > Kindle/e-reader
    

    I use the Kindle app on my smartphone and have had no problem. You need to have a US credit card, and the first time I logged in to the store through the Kindle app, I had to go into the settings and switch my location to the US (no VPN needed). Now I can buy and download all I want.

    I recently came back with the Nook Tablet. It can read a whole bunch of different formats, and I've hacked it so I can also use the Kindle app and other android apps. I haven't tried to buy anything on their store since I came back, but apparently you can just buy things on their website with your US credit card and then download to your device. My New Yorker subscription has continued to download with no issues.

    If you want a Kindle, I would suggest looking around the computer markets. I found someone selling them in Beijing, so you can probably get one here too, or buy it over taobao.

    Also, for those using various ereaders, I recommend the free Calibre software for your computer. It allows you to sync and manage ebooks on different devices, and there are some (unsupported) add-ons that allow you to strip the DRM on your ebooks and use them on different devices.

• • January 13, 2012
    
  • Forums > Living in Kunming > Amusement and Water Parks in Kunming
    

    I don't know any good ones to recommend, but avoid the one at Daguan Park. My GF and I went on a rollercoaster there, and I literally almost blacked out from the g-forces. When I got back, my roommate said he'd seen a documentary about the park's horrible safety record. Apparently it's bad even by Chinese standards.

• • January 10, 2012
    
  • Forums > Food & Drink > Local food!
    

    The best listings are probably found on dianping.com, though the site is all in Chinese. They have restaurant listings for every Chinese city, along with user reviews.

    GoKunming has the best English listings, with user reviews, but it will likely miss a lot of new or random local restaurants.

• • October 11, 2011
    
  • Forums > Living in Kunming > Latest Work Permit Requirement In Kunming
    

    @Legacyier: you're still not being clear if it's the foreigner or the company that has to have a deposit. I'm pretty sure it's the company, and this is nothing new.

    In fact, the first time I got a work permit to work at a Chinese company (ca. 2001), I believe the requirement was 500,000, but that was registered capital. Most Chinese companies will borrow the money and freeze it in a bank account for about a month while the company is registered. As soon as the registration is finished, they take the money back out.

    If there's anything new here, it would be that they have to show the labor bureau that they still have at least 300,000 in the bank right now, rather than just on their registration papers.

    Like I said, I just applied for a work permit extension through the WFOE I own (registered cap: 100,000), and this was never mentioned.

• The Old Theatre Inn
• Lost Garden Guesthouse & Restaurant
• Chicago Coffee
• Kunming Mei's Mandarin School
• As You Like
• Keats School
• Moondog
• GoKunming
• YMCA Club 1933
• Slice of Heaven
• Kingsway Tented Resorts
• Bakery 88
• Camel Bar
• The Mask
• Kunming College of Eastern Language and Culture
• My Favor Restaurant
• Chapter One
• Wonders Of Yunnan Travel
• O'Reilly's Irish Pub
• Salvador's Coffee House
• Wangtianshu Restaurant & Deli
• Tenwest Mandarin School
• Cacao Mexican Restaurant
• Flying Tigers Restaurant
• Kunming Yu-Cong Enterprise Management Company
• Huiying Dental Clinic