@tuna: I don't have this problem so count me out - you're all welcome to make a big deal out of it if it really is a big deal for you, but personally I think it's way too much about way too little. And I also suspect that, at the very least, some of the problem has to do with passengers rather than cabbies.
Pub scene often includes folks ages 25-60, maybe with a few older & a few younger, average age probably somewhere around 35. Generally speaking it seems quite a lot less age conscious than possibly comparable pub scenes in Europe or North America - I don't recall noticing anybody worrying about how old he/she is, except perhaps for students here for a semester or so who may be 20-22; also don't recall any unpleasantness ever directed towards anybody else because of his/her age.
There are a lot of Lao and Vietnamese and some Thai students here, but among westerners and/or non-students there may be more US-Americans than others (although they're still a minority); also quite a few Koreans, Brits, French, Italians, Dutch, Aussies, Belgians, Japanese, Germans, Canadians, perhaps in roughly that order - after that, dozens of other nationalities from all continents. Hard to estimate total numbers; my guess would be somewhere between 2000 & maybe 7000, majority male, majority unmarried.
'Problem getting one' simply means that there isn't always an empty taxi coming down the street the minute I want one - sometimes it takes a few minutes - worst might be as many as 20, but usually less - especially on Wenlinjie around midnight.
'A LOT OF TAXIS' means average maybe 3 a week over 10+ years, almost always late night after 10PM.
'PROBLEM' means something worth getting worked up over.
Hey, I'm not trying to put anybody on here - this is really my experience.
OK, let's see - once, a festival weekend perhaps, around midnight, I got so bored trying to find an empty taxi that didn't pick up somebody else before it got to me that I simply quit trying and walked home. And oyeah, once I tried to get a taxi to the airport around 6PM, when the shift changes, and it took maybe 25 minutes to get one. Yeah, that was a hassle, but I can't see my total of taxi experience as equal to some massive problem I need to complain about. Would be nice if the shift change wasn't right about 6PM though, but this is Kunming, and it seems 6-8PM is when you eat - not earlier, not later.
And, OK, maybe 3 times I've tried to get a cab at the train station and the cabbie has quoted a price (e.g., non-meter fare) - I didn't argue, simply took another taxi, maybe from 50-100 meters away.
This in 10 years. Can't remember ever getting in an argument with a cabbie, or having any reason to. The exceptional problems I've just mentioned really don't make me feel I need to support some campaign against cabbies.
Only other thing I can add to my 'luck' with taxis is that I always sit in the front with the driver, & perhaps chat if the guy wants to.
I really can't figure out what you guys do or don't do that doesn't work right - I stop the taxi on the street, tell him where I'm going, when I get there I pay the meter fare plus the 2rmb surcharge that is standard (sometimes I hand over 2.5 rmb), and I'm done. Has worked every single time I've taken a taxi (average probably 3-4 times a week) for the last 10.5 years in Kunming. This has ALWAYS been the case, and I've taken cabs at all hours of the evening (I virtually never take them in the daytime), including say 4AM when I've been very wasted and an easy target for anybody who wanted to rip me off.
I can only think that there's either something wrong with passenger/driver behaviour, or that drivers may take advantage of (or just become confused by) passengers who can't speak clear Chinese, or that something weird happens when you CALL a taxi (I never have).
Perhaps somebody ought to try to actually talk to a cabbie about his/her point of view & experience - my guess is most cabbies, when carrying a fare, wouldn't want to get into it, but maybe this could be done in some way (i.e., a fair, straight-forward interview - maybe a gokunming staffer might try to arrange such an interview, could make a good article).
Busses: I ride them all the time, sometimes with a backpack, never have problems & don't feel I have to watch everything like a hawk. Sorry you got pickpocketed, I'm sure it can happen, but the only bus problems I have is that often I have to stand because the bus is crowded. I stand pretty good, not really differently from everybody else on the bus, who all seem to take it pretty much in stride.
P.S. I am a whitey & obvious foreigner.
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Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.
As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.
Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.
Too bourgeois.
Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.
Ain't no flies on Salvador's.
China, US discuss human rights in Kunming
发布者I think what these governments are most interested in is not human rights, but how not to be accused of violating them.
Inside Kunming's 'dwarf empire'
发布者Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?
This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.
The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.
Around Town: Southwestern Associated University Museum
发布者See John Israel's EXCELLENT book on the history of the university:
Israel, John. Lianda: A Chinese University in War and Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998
Books about universities do not normally strike me as exciting, but this one is.
John has lived in Kunming for several months per year over the past 10 years or more.
Chinese climbers among those murdered in Pakistan
发布者Modern nationalism is a manipulative ideology to manage global capital, and nationalist blindness to actual human beings leads to the punishment of innocents. China is not a communist country. People who murder in Pakistan cannot be extradited to China to be judged for murders of people in Pakistan, even if they're Chinese.
Chinese climbers among those murdered in Pakistan
发布者Which regions are 'these regions'?