@Fitty Stim
if 'abseil' is not the popular contemporary UK English for descending with a rope, what is?

the word the blankly staring americans did understand was 'rappel' which i am fortunate to have in my vocabulary. the word is as french as 'abseil' is german.

where did you get the idea that i was upset?

"Made in America" - Bill Bryson. Excellent read.

I tell my English students The Queen's English makes the rules and we Americans break the rules. We say it, we do it anyway we want.

Before anyone starts a thread about British English vs. American English...how many Chinese people even know there is a difference? We should be focusing on getting people to speak English in the first place and fixing the problem of Chinglish.

Unlike in other parts of Asia, getting around by using English in Kunming and in China in general is a painstaking process that will get you nowhere. In fact, even from day one in China I assumed no one could speak English except my hosts and on the odd occasion I found myself alone I would use mime or try very hard to construct a sentence in Chinese...I would rather speak broken Chinese than even say one English word.

I've only met a handful of people that could even speak English in Kunming, and then only a marginal amount...don't even begin a discussion about British vs. American English until or unless the average person can even speak English, because right now only like 0.01% (unscientific results) of Kunming residents can speak any English at all.