Chenggong got another mention Monday in a BBC ghost city story:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19049254

There is an authorised HTC repair place in Kunming where I got a new genuine HTC Desire battery and have also had my phone fixed by them. I would recommend going to these guys as they actually know all the internals of each HTC phone and while they might be a bit more expensive than the guy on the side of the road, they cover their work with a warranty and are quite professional.

Their location however - I can't exactly remember, but you may not have to either as all the shop sellers seem to know where it is (I asked 3 who all pointed me in the right direction!). Basically its on the 5th floor of a building near Xiaoximen on Dong feng xi lu nearby the Nan Jiang Hotel. The building has an escalator that is glass covered and goes up the outside of the building. Go up the escalator then take the elevator to the 5th floor. I think on the 5th floor you then turn left out of the elevator and you can find some offices with the HTC repair place there.

"<Insert any law> is like trying to reduce <any unlawful act> by making it tougher for <insert any people disadvantaged by the law> to <insert controlled item>". Nice template.

Airport security is like trying to reduce hijackings by making it tougher for normal people to fly!

Food safety laws are like trying to reduce food poisoning by making it tougher for clean restaurants to make food!

Prescription drug controls are like trying to reduce poisoning by making it tougher for normal people to take pills!

I could go on but mine aren't as on topic as yours.

@Geezer

Being the most powerful and richest country, with the hardest working, most productive labor force, the destination of choice for peoples of many nations as they seek a better life, means dealing with envy, hated, and lies by those that wish our political and economic systems to fail.

Most powerful - yes militarily. Richest - only in terms of total GDP, not in terms of relative wealth. Hardest working - on average you work 34.5 hours per week, much less than a lot of other countries though on average you only have a measly 10 days off a year (Europeans/Australiasians 20-30 days). Most productive - there are quite a few countries more so. Americans self belief that the rest of the world hates them because they are "the best" at everything is completely misguided and inaccurate. People will always try to go to richer countries for a better life, it happens everywhere, in my country (New Zealand) as well, but I don't call our country "the best" because of this. You seem to be taught this "we are the best so everyone wants to be like us" rhetoric. You lead other countries in someways, other countries lead you in some ways. Accept it. Baseless belief that you are the best is misguided nationalism.

What other countries hate is that you act like the world police. Is that you attack anyone who doesn't agree with you or whose resources you want with military force. That your government treats everything with fear and distrust and then believes the path to living peacefully is self assured mutual destruction (a-laa the cold war), or assured destruction of others through military might. Your government appears to believe the only way to peace is under their terms, or else under a stalemate where mutual destruction is assured if the peace is broken. This is called: Peace at the end of a gun barrel.

And this, I believe, is where the gun debate comes in. You have this form of peace written into your constitution. Basically it reads: if the government (who has guns) acts badly, the citizens can rise up and fight the government. However, in order to do so, the people also need to be armed. Therefore, everyone who wants to be armed can be. Hence the same idea reflected again - peace (between citizens of the USA and the government) at the end of each others gun barrels - each assured of mutual destruction if someone acts badly. And hence your rights to gun ownership has a direct relationship to your foreign policy - you believe the path to peace between other countries is the same as is written into your constitution for internal peace. Its a deeply ingrained, highly pessimistic view of the world... this is what everyone else hates. We aren't jealous of you and we don't hate your citizens or your economic systems or your president or anything else, we just want you to see that the way you treat everyone else is quite terrible by everyone else's standards, that your "everyone armed to the teeth" mentality causes problems when reflected outwardly. Laotou thinks that the second amendment will help to fix the problems he hates - I am telling you the second amendment is the thing that causes a culture which makes its citizens elect successive governments who act in the way he hates.

Laotou - what do you think will happen these days when regular armed citizens beginning gunning down police in the streets because they are breaching their constitutional rights as highlighted by HFCAMPO? Do you think this will result in a peaceful outcome?

So laotou, the US is a violent place. It also is a place with a lot of problems.

What annoys the rest of the world about the US most of all is their foreign policy. They attack anyone with little provocation, act adversarially towards anyone and everyone who isn't "us". Their basis of who is "us" changes from 1 second to the next - for example now they are shaping China (note this isn't really China's doing) as the next "them" and are most likely about to attack Syria either through arms supplies or in the same style they did with Libya. The rest of the world knows why - the US needs to be on a continuous or near continuous war footing to help its economy, to force anyone who would go up against them to be in "shock and awe" of their military power and therefore acquiesce to any of their demands, or to simply gain resources (Iraq). Anyone that has been around for a while knows that this is fairly accurate.

Why? We know the US is a violent place. But so is South Africa and they don't do the same. Could it not be that the US's external policy is a mirror image of how most people treat others within your own country - first with suspicion, next by showing your enemy your long range weapons and then by using them if the two don't work?

As a non-American I can see a link between the level of gun use and ownership as a deterrent against outsiders and the same attitude used as a foreign policy tool. As a non-American I would like to see this change, but where to start? Changing the culture around gun ownership to me sounds like a good place.

Unfortunately most Americans have such an internal view that they don't see the rest of the world as relevant even when someone is doing better than them. The "if I didn't invent or think of something I will label it as socialism/communism" anti everyone else attitude is verging on insanity in a world where we should all learn from each other. In gun control you could learn a lot from other countries yet you point blank refuse to even look at stats from other countries as it may show your actions are plain wrong.

As an outsider we also know that your elections and "democracy" are little more than a farce. Until the money is taken out of your politics and more than 2 parties are allowed to compete this will never change. There is no need to lecture us on the insanity that is your government.

But as an American, what is it that you want? A more peaceful world or a less peaceful world? Or everyone to be like an American and have the same values?