Forums > Living in Kunming > Just landed. Looking for an apartment @caNYC: Sounds like you did okay, welcome to Kunming. 2600 might be a tad expensive for a 2-bedroom flat, even if it's furnished, but then that depends on the place, and I haven't seen your place.
Note for others: second-hand furniture can be bought quite cheaply at the large used furniture market near the North Train Station.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Blocks on Wikipedia - a good thing? @HFCampo: Wiki is certainly not perfect, but what evidence is there that it is a mouthpiece of the US Government?
Forums > Food & Drink > soy sauce and other condiments without msg @Spartans: I'm not suggesting people take silly chances and I'm not questioning your data, but is msg more dangerous than alcohol? Should I keep away from alcohol? Weed? McDonald's? Sex? One can try to keep away from everything dangerous, but that everything would probably include life. You can pick the things you want to keep away from, but there are priorities, relative risks, etc. - and, of course, it's not a bad idea to know what the risks are, although they're all a matter of percentages, and even then you can't know about everything, or anyway it's rather boring to try to do so, takes a lot of time away from healthy activities like, umm, rock climbing, etc. One very serious life-threateneing danger is poverty, often overlooked. In Japan, Hong Kong and I suppose elsewhere, sushi and sashimi are discounted near the end of the day, for obvious reasons - Japan is very strict about food health, and they obviously know a lot about raw fish. I just had some, it was good.
Choose your poisons, okay, but there is no such thing as a safe life.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Smoking in Starbucks @spartans: Fine, make your own choices, but don`t expect that your acts will not be judged by others, just as you judge the acts of others. I.e., freedom/responsibility are flip sides of the same coin. Applies both to smokers at Starbucks and the reactions or overreactions of those who object to it. I`d suggest that ethical responses are those that make advances to solving a problem whitout causing greater problems than the one one is attempting to solve. And yeah, it`s pretty hard to get that one right all the time, so maybe a little communicative slack is better than confrontation, which means at least a temporary breakdown in communication - though there are times for that too. The more temporary, the better. In the end what we want is a highest-common-denominator mutual agreement, not a control system.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Some teaching and visa questions Unless something has changed, you would not be asked to return to you home country, though you` probably have to go to Hong Kong, or somewhere else outside of mainland China (e.g., Chiangmai).
Mass arrests shine light on illicit Sino-Burmese timber trade
发布者Such a crackdown is a good thing.
Celebrating a Tibetan Christmas in Yunnan
发布者Nice article, sounds like interesting research.
China pursues soft power agenda with Thailand
发布者If & when they get the RR link through Laos built, yes, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Winners: Best of Kunming Awards 2014
发布者Would be interesting to know how many votes were cast, and for what/whom.
Kunming to Vietnam border by rail soon to be reality
发布者Smoking areas on trains are confined to the passages between the cars. I've had lots of experience on Chinese trains (2nd-class sleepers, mostly) and have found that people almost always respect this rule, at least these days. Hope you can handle it.