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).
'Potato college' serious, Chinese netizens less so
发布者I personally look forward to the spread of the baked potato.
China, Laos agree to $500 million railway loan
发布者True about how Laos has little credit, but it seems you're comparing Lao-Chinese national relations with those of brothers, and I think that kind of metaphor is a bit overused - national ruling classes, who make or break agreements and devise policies etc. in the name of 'nations', have interests, not friends, as has been famously stated by...who was that guy? Sometimes these interests coincide, at least for a while, but there is usually a dominant partner/class group.
China, Laos agree to $500 million railway loan
发布者A little confused, not sure how to think about this - seems to me that both Chinese and Lao interests will benefit from the RR - so why should Laos have to pay for ALL of it?
Shangri-la old town reopens two years after devastating fire
发布者Sounds okay so far, near as one can tell - but an open question: who benefits most, in terms of money and/or power (or, or that matter, anything else), from the creation of such tourist spaces and cultures, and where do they live? Is it all win-win? And how might it be calculated?
Stone Forest tourists surpass four million in 2015
发布者Went there once and found it interesting just to wander around the surrounding area on my own - plenty of interesting limestone outside the designated area, & people you meet are neither tourists nor people trying to sell you tourist experiences. And of course it's free.