Impression:" over the last few years the summer rains have generally been starting a bit earlier most years - seem to me they didn't much start until early June about 10 years ago. Temperatures, on average, seem slightly higher in the winter months too (despite the snow last winter).
Also, museums.
I have this vision of huge ocean-going vessels pulling away from the West Coast of the US, filled with weightless Airflakes and Sugartoodles, churning and polluting the waters of the Pacific and exhausting fossil fuels so that leetle American kiddies in inland Asia can have their Frosty the Tiger breakfast. Now I've got nothing against indulging kids in their favorite foods and I'm well aware that it's hard to deny them, but all this comes at a price, and I'm not talking about dollars or renminbi.
@mmkunming: I second your question, though there are a very few items that are worth importing (e.g.: really good olives and cheeses, mustard). But I have to laugh my ass off when I see, for example, US breakfast cereals at the Wicker Basket.
@Peter: OK - but what I meant by 'a certain amount of rootlessness' is something like: the ability to examine 'roots', practices, institutions, beliefs, habits etc. from a relatively 'nonattached' standpoint so as to be able to decide what should change and what should not. Change itself, and the tearing of thoughtless roots by the creation of new conditions, often allows us to examine change from this perspective. However, I'm not disagreeing with you about the developments you mention, which are all pretty worrisome.
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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.
Researching the Nuosu Yi language in Sichuan
发布者I read Winnington's book - pretty sure the guy was a British Communist - and I disagree about the comparison with Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, which was sheer colonialist racism (fictional, of course).
The Dai stilted house
发布者Nope, not all replaced.
Life in Kunming: A horologist's perspective
发布者Sounds like an interesting dude.
The Dai stilted house
发布者Dai, Lowland Lao and Thai peoples all have ancestors from China - not all within China became 'sinicized' - the Dai did not, though they have been becoming increasingly sinicized more recently. Until recent centuries, and even into recent centuries, contact between the Dai and Lao and Thai and other Tai groups continued - modern nationalist borders are more strongly established, and the areas within them more culturally colonized, than those of former empires and kingdoms.
'Kunming Foreigner Street' tenants speak out
发布者Try other night market areas in Kunming, the one on Wenhuaxiang has gotten...weird, over the last 4-5 years. I have a feeling many of the folks who go there, mostly in their 20s & 30s, to 'shop', think of it as somehow a 'fashionable' place.