Right, guess that's good sense - see book, match up id number with the guy's id - thanks.

I've been in Kunming for over 10 years but always in the same flat. Now I've just given a retainer sum to the landlord of another flat, through a real estate guy. Occurs to me I have no proof that the landlord, whom I met, actually owns the flat. I would suppose the real estate agent would share some responsibility for this, but I don't know.
Any suggestions?

Horror show. If the baggage staff et al were trained as well as the pilots...somehow doesn't surprise me that they were not.

You may be right, Napoleon - perhaps the Trump election in the US will make no difference whatever to the world outside US borders. So ok, we'll wait and see.

And I agree about too much American tv, which tends to promote US presidential elections as being the world standard for 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'progress' and 'development' and so forth, and US society as the subsection of the species to which all other groups aspire to attain, and which they can attain, if they'll just listen to US ideals, protection of private corporate 'rights' throughout the world (some of which corporations may be based inside the US and are to be defended by the president & friends), etc.

Bottom line really is that it's not simply a matter of Trump as president - although before we get to the bottom line a lot of crazy sh*t can happen. My highly unscientific prediction, for which I give no evidence or argument whatsoever, is that it will (all tightly sealed within the US borders, of course(?))

Napoleon, to imagine that the government of one country does not influence the lives of people everywhere makes it hard for us to understand the presence of foreign troops, international money interests, the international exploitation of labor by capital, the level of the stock market, the many incidents of state violence outside the borders of the state, the presence in various countries of hundreds of thousands of refugees from war and poverty...or maybe, somehow, none of this has anything to do with the government of the US?

We are involved in a historical sea change, and none of us are going to like it.