Forums > Living in Kunming > Gift shopping in Kunming for a local A worthy gift would be to learn her native tongue... to traverse online with help of your Chinese friends/staffs to find her novel items nonexistent in Kunming.
You often take her out shopping around town. So whatever you buy in this city she has already seen, which dampens the element of surprise.
Taking the time and effort to learn simple Chinese online lingo would not only impress her, but serves a beneficial learning curve for yourself. A long-term investment to further improve relationship with your child in the 5G+ future. Especially if you intend to stay in China for the long haul. The Chinese internet isn't going anywhere in the decades to come.
You gotta start sometime, why not now?
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@Jan: "... arranging the delivery while preserving an element of surprise would be difficult."
Shipping and package retrievals have been significantly upgraded in the last two years. I'm sure you've already seen the green “Hive Boxes” (aka “feng chao” / 丰巢) placed outside or inside commercial & residential buildings.
All package delivery companies, even EMS, will use Hive Boxes upon customer request. Couriers will store your parcel in one of the container slots and send you a text password combination to open at your own convenience.
Retrievals are free for first 24 hours. If you collect your package within 24-hour time period and the Hive Box screen displays 1 rmb, it is just a misleading donation plea. Just skip (跳过) the message as the payment isn’t mandatory until after 24-hours. 1 rmb fee per day afterwards.
I’ve seen people open Hive Box by entering passwords after 30 days. The person was required to transfer 29 rmb via barcode to open. Convenient for those who’ve been out of town and needed long-term storage.
For maximum privacy. Don’t leave your frequently used mobile number for shipping contact info when making online purchases. This would cut down on annoying call solicitations and spam texts. Leave your seldom-used, secondary SIM card. Just follow Hive Box official account on Wechat. Register by verifying with said secondary number. When packages arrive, Hive Box passwords will be sent via WeChat message in lieu of text messages or calls from courier to your regular mobile phone. Granted you may need to answer their call if Hive Box is full.
To say nothing of convenience, the Hive Box not only maintains privacy and anonymity of recipient, but safety. Especially if recipient is a home alone, underaged female.
If Hive Box is absent in your vicinity, or if particular packages are too big for the Hive Box, there are plenty of package collection services around town. They are called “代收,” which may come in the form of mom & pop shops that charge 1 rmb a day to store your packages. Download Alibaba’s Cainiao (菜鸟) app to find these designated collection centers nearest you.
Spring City's tallest skyscraper nears completion
发布者Looking forward to the new 345-meter skyscraper, though it doesn't appear to be on schedule. Edward, where is this new Shangri-La Hotel situated?
Agreed. As a general rule, investing in assets hedges against inflation.
Hot & sour noodles that costs 2 yuan over a decade ago now costs 10 yuan... 15 yuan in another five years. The value of RMB saved in our proverbial piggy banks is steadily losing value.
However, anyone with cash savings on-hand who aims to maximize their earning potential ought to invest in the property market elsewhere in China, not in Spring City.
Despite sprawling high-rises along KRT stations, Kunming's property market growth has been lackluster compared to other provincial capitals, secondary or tertiary cities.
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
发布者First and foremost, I'm very sorry Geezer for feeling that our argument over data was perceived as an ad hominem attack... often the case when one's core beliefs & values are threatened. GKM is a relatively tight-knit community, and you're a valuable cohabitant.
Said inconsistency of China's statistics is another topic of debate.
But for sake of argument, I'd agree with you. Every nation, company, and scientific research studies have intrinsic biases and may bend statistical data and models accordingly. Some more than others.
I will concede that.
As you astutely pointed out, that 9% may be exaggerated or misinterpreted as year-on-year reductions by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), when in fact that figure may represent reductions over a three-year period since this particular data collection started. Nonetheless, the more conservative estimate of 3% is still a big reduction of coal production.
Even if we view NBS' stats with incredulous caution, the overall downward trend of coal-fired power plants for production of eco-friendly EVs is a positive sign for the environment. Cheers.
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
发布者@Geezer
China's capitalist motivation notwithstanding, now you're arguing against EV production in China by claiming, with static data, that "in 2016, 59% of China's electricity was produced in coal fired plants"...
but you failed to mention that is a 9% coal production reduction, 4.7% coal consumption reduction, and 2% coal as energy mix year-on-year reduction in 2016.
Furthermore, China is the global leader in the renewable energy movement... #1 in wind energy, #1 in hydropower (by far), #2 in solar energy (quickly gaining on Germany).
All trends point to eventual alignment of EV production dominance, from sustainable green energy sources.
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
发布者No Geezer, you said, "Bad idea, an environmental catastrophe in the making."
If EVs had your nimble backpedaling feature, they would sell like pancakes. ;)
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
发布者@Geezer, "new research" that was published way back in 2012, and pertains to productions of electric vehicles (EVs) from dirty, coal-fired power plants...
granted CPC's technocrats ought to beef up oversight of carbon emission standards in China's supply-chain production & disposal processes of EVs en route to leading the e-mobility manufacturing revolution, trailed by Europe.
Norway, (where that research paper was written), has the highest per capita number of all-electric [battery only] cars in the world. They are a model nation for EVs, albeit produced from low carbon electricity sources. Luckily for them, 90% of electricity used by Norwegian homes are from hydropower.
As the paper suggested, EVs "make sense" if production comes from cleaner energy sources. This aligns with China's shift from coal energy dependency to renewable ones. This year, China has already halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants. A stark contrast to Trump's "bring back coal" initiative.