Hi Erik
All easy to find here
You got:
-teaching experience...check

Kunming has:
-martial arts schools.....check (if you want you can practise at a Shaolin Temple branch in the south of town)
-Art stuff.....check (depending on what you need/like) even art workshops are available.
-yoga...check
-gyms (with yoga) ....check

-(my addition) 'good' live music....check

Rent is extremely cheap for the quality of housing, comparatively.
I recommend to save up about 10.000-15.000 RMB (if you want to find a place quickly), for agencies and fees usually you can bargain down to 6 month pay on a one year contract. Sometimes you can get lucky and get 3 month payments.
The location is not really that relavant as long as you stay near the city center, since Kunming is considerably small and a scooter (2000-5000RMB) or mountain bike (used 500 to 3000 RMB new), or a bus card would fix most your transportation problems.

We live in a 3 room apartment with almost hundred sqm for about 2000RMB/month not far from WenlinJie, the house is brand new. That was a gem we found but if you have a bit time you will find the perfect place for very little money.

Work is even easier to find, than findng accom (IMHO), pay ranges from 5000RMB (Universities, with good packages, as you memtioned you'd like) up to 15.000 or even 20.000 RMB at private schools depending on your experience and negotiation skills.

I would say the usual salary is somehwere in the 6000RMB to 11.000RMB range, depending on hours and othr factors.
But if you get a few private students as most teachers do, you will easily be able to use that as 'loan-payback cash'.
And you would have enough money to have a comfy life in Kunming. Plus if you stay longer and know more people around, you'd be able to get a better working position or better job.

So I would just make sure to get enough money for rent and then a little money to live on for two month, until you find a 'good' job. And there are plenty.

I would already check for work now since September comes soon and all the positions will be filled. Leading to another 3 month until the first wave of crappy teachers getting fired (if at all) and their positions are available, but then the schools would be extremely careful and implementing new reactionary rules and regulations, plus the cut in salary and packages. So until November/December it's: "a new term, new start", sorta time.
The Spring season of teaching, metaphorically speaking. lol

I know how you feel about this issue but I don't quite agree. For sure in cases of emergency it is a barrier but mostly in the most dangerous emergencies (sickness, hospitals...etc) I always realized that if someone gives you the good old yunnan or Kunming hua, greeted with a raised eyebrow, they switch to mandaring or close to it.

Actually I think a whole lot of people can't really speak mandarin, especially in the service sector since they are low salary jobs and thus filled by a lot of coutryside folks and people of Chinese schools from the outskirts were teachers often can't speak standard mandarin.

Even more, I had a few kids in my classes, that never learned standard mandarin, because they mostly grow up with their Baomu's and Nannies and they also come often from villages and such, where standard mandarin is not that 'standard'.

But I kinda love that language barrier stuff (if not in danger) it gives e the giggles all the time. I have this scooter parking guy, whenever he talks to me I have literally no f***ing idea about he word he just said, probably 30 % becasue he constantly has a tobacco pipe in his face and the other 70% he just doesn;t speak putonghua.
The funniest thing is, his wife wants to help translate but her mandaring is as s**t as his. It's hilarious, I really enjoy it, especially that we get along great, not knowing what the other said. lol

And everytime I leave I have to laugh because we both speak chinese and are not able to communicate, and I just talk nonstop when I get there and nod with the hope that he at least gets me.

And I agree with yankee, it's good to have those dialects around, gives them a special cultural note.

Plus it's not a chinese thing, I went to France a few times and 80% of all french guys speak alright English but they expect you to learn and speak french even if you are only there for one week vacation. One Frencho even told me that because their language is so beautiful.....The french are funny

Some correction, about the commodities. I just saw it depends where you bid plus the option in several places for both pounds or metric tons.
-C'est la vie-

You can trade Coffee futures at

-NYSE Euronext (Euronext),

-New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and

-Tokyo Grain Exchange (TGE).

Euronext Robusta Coffee (No. 409) futures prices are quoted in dollars per metric ton and are traded in lot sizes of 10 tonnes .

-NYMEX Coffee futures are traded in units of 37500 pounds (17 metric tons) and contract prices are quoted in dollars per pound.

-TGE Arabica Coffee futures prices are quoted in yen per bag and are traded in lot sizes of 50 bags (3450 kilograms).

-TGE Robusta Coffee futures are traded in units of 5000 kilograms and contract prices are quoted in yen per kilogram.

@ Geezer
I can't use the venues names coz of obvious legal reasons. Duh!
Coffe in the commodity market is traded by metric tons as most other items there, sorry about that.

It seems this is all about English spelling, grammar and punctuation rather than about the coffee subject.

Anyway this is fantastic, I rest my case and the question mark that is challenging your understanding of the last column,-with it.

I guess our conversation, dear Geezer should end here so that we both won't get blocked. I got the response I expected.

I apologize for upsetting you.

@Geezer
Yep you got me. You anger shows me that you may have have a background knowledge but not much applied knowledge in small business finance.

the metrical pound of coffee is 453 gram as (if you can read) stated above unfortunately the coffee sold to small business owners in 250g (organic) 500g, 1kg, 3kg, 5kg packs, depending on the brand, if you call me an idiot or not. So using the price of the metric ton bought at the commodities market is of little use except price flunctuation which should already be included in the price anyway. So the end customer is not buying it from the commodities market but from a farmer directly or over a supplier, who sells by above mentioned measures. And charge you their resell price etc...are we really going back to the 4th Grade business basics.

My point is your(plural) calculations ar less effective because the commodity price has only limited meaning to the owner/manager of a cafe. The supplier or farmer price has (which yes is influenced by the commodiy price but supplier can adjust to it slightly). Some cafes even sell organic coffee or farmed cafe on their own to make up for flunctuations.

charity:
Most cafes that say help the poor people of the world, have usually a much higher price than other only profit cafes. So they don't help the poor since most of the extra charge they cash in for themelves, thus raising the customer price for coffee, right? does that qualify for a reasoning for end consumer coffee price?

Slave labor costs:
Slave labor in terms of businesses is a common term of underpaying staff so it's not ment to be taken literally. And yes it is not being realistic to kunming cost of living. Plus most important 1500RMB for a service worker is already extreeeeeeeeemly good in China.

I posted about it becasue it was in the OP.

business therory 101:
1. Location, location, location,
2. and no! the reason why most businesses fail is according to studies and facts, the lack of estimating the time for a business to turn over profits.

4. Greedy business is not necessarily the same as Bad Businesses:
As OP pointed out his ideas of greedy is not the same as the thing you mentioned which is bad business
Greedy businesses won't run out of business because they don't get their costs right. But because of other reasons, (just one example) their wealth/ development distribution with their employees (or more examples, lol) product quality, image, marketing, betting on the wrong horse....etc
5. the rules don't alwasy apply.

Your founder friend is absolutely right, but as a business teacher you for sure know that the small businesses only run in theory similar to the way corporations or bigger businesses run.

As you said your buddy is running a chain/franchise business and there you have plenty more variables in terms of loss and investment, something most small venues in Kunming or small cafe owners world wide just don't have. e.g. Logistics, transportation, storage (any idea how much industrial storage costs?), bad franchise losses, training, staff etc.
Compare that for example to the chinese counterpart such as Sal's, LanBaiHong, or other cafes in China.

Leading to the point of the OP, how can it be that a coffee (of qualitatively higher beans from all over the world) at for example starbucks is sold at a sometimes cheaper price to the coffee around WenLinJie.

I know the rent price of WenLinJie, the cost of labor and I can guess the bean price (just take the store price of imported Carrefour coffee) keep in mind that quantity means discount. And you can find the profit calculation for a cup of starbucks cappucino online compare that with the WenlinJie counterpart and voila,....high profit, low wages for staff.
Starbucks pays insurance, high wages, and professional development, try to beat that on WLJ. P.S. I'm not a fan of starbucks coffee.

And putting all those factors in, the coffee price still doesn't make sense, except owners trying to make big margins. I don't blame them, the business world is tough, I run two businesses very successfully (even though being uneducate and such) but I am using a niche that allows me to sell high end quality at a low price and forward it to my staff and still make sufficient profits.

Your numbers:

They are incomplete and not realistic in term of real cost-revenue calculations. Because as you were teaching/preaching the OP which I don't mind necessarily, at least then you should get it right first, IMHO.
Oh, how do I know my ex was running a cafe and I was helping out, different city though.

But I am just uneducated so how would I know?