Forums > Living in Kunming > Where to buy backpacks in Kunming? Sorry, I can't help as my backpacks were bought overseas! But I do have a rather good eye for packs - the ones upstairs on the upstairs/downstairs store on Long Xiang Jie are definitely not fakes (which explains why the price is the same as I pay in the west for the same pack!). I suspect they re-import these from Hong Kong or the west somewhere because if they get it straight from the Chinese factories they are overcharging!
There is another place that sells top quality packs near the corner of Renmin Xi Lu and Huan Cheng Xi Lu, on the south side of Renmin Xi Lu heading west from the intersection. They have foreign packs/clothing and climbing gear (heaps including binas/quickdraws/ropes etc) which are all the genuine article but reflected in the price! Been looking at a walking axe from there but at 1000 kuai, she's pretty expensive!
What are you wanting the pack for? Day to day carrying stuff, 9 hour multiday hiking or something inbetween?
Forums > Food & Drink > Wasteful Business Lunches Yeah, I get da bao all the time, I don't care what others think, I am going to have a good feed later with the leftovers! I have convinced my local girlfriend that this is good too and now she doesn't care about face so much either and is sometimes the first to suggest da bao!
Forums > Living in Kunming > Verification HFCAMPO - you shouldn't trust people more because they have a GoKM verified email account as email accounts can be created simply and never used again. I could create an email account in about 5 minutes, verify my GoKM and look "safer", but I might still be spam. What I am trying to say is don't put too much trust into GoKM's or any website that requires email verification as its easy to get around. What it DOES do is lessen the likelihood of spam and ensure passwords can be reset easily.
And don't worry - people aren't trying to access or steal your computer/bank account on your computer by putting up useless info on GoKM. The trick with this is: never click on a link or install anything on your computer that looks suspect, whether the link/info appears on GoKM or anywhere else on the web. All the information and website functionality in the www.gokunming.com site is under GoKM's control so you can trust it pretty well. GoKM COULD have its security compromised (I remember the site was hacked a year or so ago), but its not likely and would be fixed pretty quickly.
Forums > Living in Kunming > New visa for China in HK Double entry 90 day visas were definitely not possible there when I went about 6 months ago. I tried and the woman at the counter told me you can only get those in your home country, the maximum they are allowed to give is 30 day double entry visas. I also asked an English couple who were after the same thing and they said they were told the same story.
I have no idea about the other visa types though.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Verification Most of them probably either haven't noticed or can't be bothered. It's not a biggie, for years GoKM didn't need verification of email and now it does.
My tip for GoKM staff would be to enforce verification of email before anyone can post, i.e. not make it optional. This is the defacto standard now for almost any forum/review site etc on the web so why not here?
Nestlé investing 100 million yuan in Pu'er coffee
发布者Nestle - commonly voted as one of the worst companies in the world as it supports child slavery on the Ivory Coast and has, for years, pushed infant milk formula in poor countries as being "better than breast". Be very careful about giving them any kudos for their perceived support of local farmers, most likely they are simply looking for a cheaper way to get their product and don't care if getting their product means breaking labour laws or damaging the environment. They have consistently shown they are a company which does anything at all to improve their bottom line whether completely illegal or morally grey.
Apple concludes massive Chinese marketing scheme
发布者A haaa haaa haa haaa, not fooled for a second, but good try :-)
Water treatment plants to be installed along Dianchi
发布者Actually, that link I provided stated that the biggest plant processes 1 billion litres a DAY not a YEAR as I stated. Which means they can process 1.38 billion m3 of water a year! That's an astronomical amount... especially considering its only for 5 million consumers... most likely its industry as well.
So the one they are proposing is still entirely possible, it would be under half the size of the worlds biggest.
Water treatment plants to be installed along Dianchi
发布者Check out this:
www.algor.com/news_pub/cust_app/jardine/jardine.asp
The worlds largest water treatment plant processes 1 billion gallons a year. 1 m3 = 264 gallons. Therefore the worlds largest plant processes around 3.8 million m3 a year. But that is for drinking water, maybe these plants will filter to a lesser degree?
Dianchi has a surface area of 298 km2 and a mean depth of (a measly) 4.4m which gives a volume of 1.3 billion m3 (my maths right?). Which means with a couple of plants they could filter the whole of Dianchi in a year! Something tells me that's not quite right...
Besides, this will process the water flowing from a river right? I suppose 19m3 a second is about right for a river flow though, but a pretty big river, like the size of this one:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applegate_River
I haven't seen one that big around Dianchi though... I think someone's screwed the numbers somewhere.
Remember that these plants may not operate 24/7/365 as well which makes it look even more unlikely.
Water treatment plants to be installed along Dianchi
发布者Oh yeah, and is that figure right?
"clean an estimated 600 million cubic meters of water annually"
That works out to be around 1100 cubic metres of water every minute (or 19 cubic metres every second)! And that's if its going 365 days a year 24 hours a day... I would be highly surprised if this was accurate, but it could be, not sure how they clean the water...