On the events section, I have long wanted to comment for some time on the lack of listing of cultural events other then bar programs and restaurant sales. Nordica and a few school events perhaps being the exceptions.

For example, recently the Kunming Provincial Museum had a excellent painting exhibition. Tonight May 4 the Kunming Theater has Festival Croisement 2012 with French modern ballet. Later in the month May 23 and 24 they have a continuation of this Croisement series. The local symphony orchestra plays there monthly.A concert is coming there this month conducted by a visiting Canadian.
The recent Kunming Carnival was not listed on this site in advance but had three days of events. The parade was covered after event.
Kunming is not with out culture but it can be hard to find.

@Long-Dragon - i see your point. it is my understanding that those planning or holding events need to contact the GoKunming team to list these events. it would be nice to have a calendar of events like some magazine websites offer in other cities (i'm thinking of Time Out etc.) but is it realistic to expect this of a website that appears to be run on advertising revenue by a small group of dedicated individuals? quite possibly not. still, it's not a bad idea and one that i'd support :)

if people put the link to the events in the News and Announcements then that would help solve the issue.

I wholeheartedly agree that these types of events ought to be better represented in the events section.

debaser - yes it is realistic to expect this. Why? Because if GoKunming is a place that lists events that people want to see, it will increase the people that visit the site. In turn this will increase the number of people that view the advertisers in the "Events" section and enrich both the website and the advertisers.

To be honest, if I was working for GoKM, I would redesign their Events section and calendar. With the Events side bar that appears on every page I would categorise into sections (maybe one for "At bars/restaurants", one for "Cultural", one for "Music" or some other categorisation). Then only list the name of the bar/restaurant/event, with more information available when you hover over the link i.e. a popup window stating the details (like the "From The Web" section on the homepage).

This would:

1. Make the Events side bar less wordy and cluttered (which is hard to read with so much info and doesn't list all events anyway - i.e. today there are 4 Other events which you have to go to the calendar to see, users could essentially view all events on one page unless there are 40 events in one day)

2. Enable people to hover over their favourite places still to see whats on (e.g. like Orielly's to see what sport they are showing today)

3. Provide a clearer breakdown to viewers who are only interested in particular sections so don't have to read through everything to find to the one they want - which invariably they won't so people will miss events of interest.

On their Calendar page, move the calendar to the top centre instead of a sidebar on the right. Stretch the wording across for each event - effectively you will be able to list more on a single page instead of having them squashed into a thin strip down the middle.

But hey, I am just a software designer, what would I know :-)

Oh yeah - with that events listing change on every page, you would then have every event listed and only go down to the end of the Oriellys listing for today. That would mean your first side bar picture advertisement would be visible directly from your homepage without scrolling - a big selling point for your advertisers as you would have 2 advertisements visible from your homepage without scrolling instead of 1. A visual representation of what I mean:

GoKunimng
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Events
Saturday, May 5
At bars/restaurants

Camel Bar

Moondog

Oriellys

Samoana

The Mask

Chapter One

The Dali Hump

Cacao
Cultural

Kunming Keats School
Music

TCG Nordica

Full Cup Cafe

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Sidebar Advert |

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Obviously you would have to make a call on which section each one goes into but I am sure it wouldn't be too difficult (e.g. regular live music at Cacao doesn't fall into the Music section).

Hey wait, do I get paid for this?? Ha haa, I can say now that you can use my ideas royalty free no problem if you want!

Agree. It sure would be great to have advance notice of interesting cultural events. If one browses this website now, one could get the mistaken impression that the only thing Kunming expats care about is going to bars.

I would like to add to Long-Dragon's list...Events that happen at the Kunming International Convention and Exhibition Center outside of the auto show are usually not listed.

I went to an excellent SE Asian Trade Fair last year where vendors from Thailand to Afghanistan showed up to sell goodies to the general public. No mention in GoKunming (with previous management/owners).

A very large Puer Tea Trade show occurred in April of this year at the convention center, and again no mention.

I also would like to see a bit more of the local cultural events brought to our, the expats, attention. The bureaucratic "we must be formally notified" answer just suggests to me 1) too long in China, or 2) no imagination.

GoKunming is able to attend and cover many local cultural events, which indicates prior knowledge, without informing readers before they take place. .....damn, wish I had known about that!

We at GoKunming agree that we should be listing more cultural events as well. For a big part right now we rely on venues submitting their events, mainly because being able to actively reach out to every venue and finding out about every event through many different sources requires quite a lot of dedicated time spent.

We try to list as much as possible and at the same time we'll never be able to list everything that happens in the city. Admittedly, the parade was a rather big event – still something I only found out about by accidentally passing by.

@blobbles: Thanks for sharing your ideas. As a matter of fact, we're working on redesigning the website and welcome any ideas from our (regular) users to make the website better. Don't expect big changes until several months from now, as we take the redesign seriously and hope to create the best possible website we're able to come up with now. Your suggestions for the events section have previously already been incorporated in our new (concept) design, as we already came to the same conclusion as you did. :)