hi there,
does anybody know if in km ther's a darkroom that people can use to develop pictures themselves? and is it possible to buy the liquids and the photography paper for the dark room? i shoot with a black and white film, normally an ilford, but here it seems impossible to find. do you know where i could buy it? in the shops i've been they just have an iso100 b&w chinese film..
thankyou for the help!

You could try to buy film and paper online. TaoBao.com, you may need a Chinese speaker to help you.

To be honest I am surprised you even managed to find B&W film.

You could try the arts centre on Renmin Lu, somebody there might know of local artists who use B&W, or photo clubs. If you can contact them it may help.

There may even be a photography club or course at one of the universities. This at least would put you in touch with a local network of photographers.

The only other thing I could suggest about film is to ship it from home.

I've been poking around the photo industry a bit in Kunming and, being a "new" city, is almost entirely digital. The "Kodak" shops you see here and there will have a few rolls of expired Royal Gold 200, and I found one place on Zhengyi Lu that had some Velvia in 120, but that's about it. They may have had some XP2, too, though my memory may be faulty on that.

I bought a bunch of film at Wing Shing/Man Shing in HK on my last trip, and even there they don't even bother to keep it refrigerated anymore.

I'm still trying to find a lab that does decent C41 and frontier-type scans. Makes me nauseous sacrificing a roll of film each time I try a place, but I can't travel to HK every time I want to run film.

(The "Canan" lenses in a shop at the "Wedding Dress and Photography Equipment Center" at the corner of Xichang Lu and Jinbi Lu are something else entirely! But that mall is dying; killed off by Taobao, I presume. Not worth the trip. Lots of cheap chinese strobe equipment; not a western brand in sight.)