User profile: voltaire

User info
  • Registered
  • VerifiedNo

Forum posts

0
Forums > Travel Yunnan > short trips from kunming

Generally you want to get a bus to most destinations in Yunnan. Trains don't go to many places, leave less frequently, and the train station is a pain to get to with the traffic these days.

Once you get 'out there' a bit sometimes you need to hitch or whatever as well.

I'd recommend the north bus station on Beijing Lu (in the north part of the city) as a good jumping-off point.

0
Forums > Travel Yunnan > short trips from kunming

There are so many.

The villages in the mountains near the Yangtse north of Kunming on the border of Sichuan.

Jianshui and Gejiu and Yuanyang.

Jinggu/Jingdong area.

Dali.

Luoping.

Just go to a bus stop and jump on a random bus! You won't be disappointed.

0
Forums > Food & Drink > Kunming cuisine

There's load of great food: don't listen to the haters. Though there was some oil stuff in the news awhile back, you don't have to fear it in most places.

For starters, you can get a stupendous variety of vegetables (particularly mushrooms) done in many styles. For some ideas there check out vegetarian-china.info/ and pics on the facebook group.

Yunnan is famed for a few things, but mostly various types of rice noodles (cold, in soup, or fried), tofu dishes, the goat's cheese known as 'rubing', and Dai cuisine. Dai cuisine is Yunnan's Tai style cuisine, which can be roughly divided in to Dehong-style and Xishuangbanna-style, which are quite different. Both feature a lot of different types of bamboo as well as palm heart (banana flower).

A good place to eat a huge variety of cheap Yunnanese food is 'Kadilan', a two-floor restaurant opposite Mandarin Books on Wenhuaxiang.

Classifieds

No results found.

Comments

Note that can refer specifically to the Chinese mulberry (on which silkworms are grown) or may refer more generally to thistle or thorny shrubs. As the document is written for the Emperor/imperial bureaucracy, the choice of character could be an purposeful implication, ie. 'its a thorny horrid place', or 'we will gain mulberry fields and silk through conquering their territory'.

Note also that the Chinese author of the text specifically accuses Nanzhao of stealing silkmaking technology from the Chinese through capturing large numbers of women and children in a recent invasion of Sichuan, and asserts that all of Nanzhao is now capable of silk production.

@Peter99

Your theory sounds good however my observations differ - in the 9th century Nanzhao-era / Tang Dynasty text about Yunnan I am translating is used instead of or for Tuodong.

The degree of character-shifting observed over time would suggest that the 'real' origin of the sound Tuodong is an earlier, endemic, non-Chinese language. Given the time and historical linguistic makeup of Yunnan to which modern groups and other evidence attest, this was probably related either to a language spoken by the Yelang Kingdom (eg. Miao/Hmongic) or an Yi language.

As I have already found very directly attested Yi words transliterated to Chinese in the same book in the context of Nanzhao's army, weapons and customs, I would suggest this may be the origin.

Unfortunately Yi is a very fragmented language family so it is difficult to infer meaning to ancient phonemes.

en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Manshu

I wonder if there's some kind of historical study about the cured hams ... clearly Xuanwei took the cake as the 'famous place' in modern times, but how far back did that extend? I suspect not all that far. What of the cured hams of Pu'er, Dali, etc.? Is this all stemming from a single tradition (as is likely) or are there distinct approaches? Curing can occur through salt or smoke, what range of techniques are used across Yunnan? Are these limited to or aligned with particular geographies or meats? 'Ganba' beef, for example, tends to be smoked water buffalo meat.

Reviews


By

@nailer is being unfairly dismissed: they are certainly fallible. At one point they were well managed and the only game in town, and their outdoor bar had an interesting social vibe. Recently, none of these is the case (was given a bad bill to the tune of ~300% - no managers present and a subsequent complaint resulted in a less than ideal outcome, many more places are now open, and the outdoor bar is closed). Unless you are specifically seeking faux-Americana (often far better examples elsewhere) or two degrees removed faux-Mexicana, there's little reason to go there. How come French Cafe can serve a great sandwich for 24 but Sals requires 50 for a pretend-exoticized nibble? Certainly the business will continue, but the hey-dey is clearly gone. Romaniticizing the past aint gonna help. E-waste recycling by shipping (non carbon neutral) junk across the country? Puh-lease. Garbage processing people here recycle anyway! I applaud the ethical stance of one of the managers, but the place has frankly lost its mojo.


By

Hands down the best draft craft beer in Kunming. On top of that, very reasonable prices for food and other drinks (especially wine).


By

Called the number provided on a Friday at 2:15PM while a 10% discount was advertised "on Friday and Saturday" (listed in GoKunming specials).

A Chinese person answered the 'English' phone number in Mandarin then explained in broken English that you need to order 3 hours in advance. (Subtext: As their business is so slow)

Grumble. False advertising. Waste of time. Seems 100% Chinese run. Probably bad pizza.


By

The listing here is wrong! Teresa's are not defunct, they are just back to being one store instead of two stores on Wenlinjie now! They are still in business, still answer on this phone number, and are still delivering! Points for consistency, it's been years! As of right now, it's 68 for the more toppings vegetarian at the largest size. They will do thin or thick crust. Yes, it's not to everyone's taste, but I always used to find adding dried chilli powder and some extra salt brought it up to tasty. Might go for a dash of Sichuan pepper oil to spice it up this time around. (You know you've been in China too long when...)

By

I also had a bad experience here recently.

Honestly, I wish them the best of luck, but I do think the staff are poorly managed and the owners have the wrong attitude and a clear lack of experience in service-oriented business. While the pizza is OK, everything else I have tried (including overnight stay) can be had cheaper and better elsewhere, and the pizza at Roccos is better in my opinion. The service has always fluctuated between acceptable to don't care.

Since they don't have their situation resolved yet, and it has been a few years, I have made the decision not to go there anymore or send anyone else. It's just not worth the hassle, given the crappy location (masked as private or lost). Better pizza with more quiet and privacy on Roccos' terraces.