In the winter of 2003/2004 it snowed quite a bit. Stuck all around Green Lake Park, and I remember heading down to Yunnan University, where students were having snowball fights and playing in the snow. I've never seen it snow like that here since, so that's probably what the taxi driver was referring to. There have been flurries over the years, but nothing too intense.

I've received a few posts on friend's Weibo and Weixin accounts, but the story seemed really too outlandish to believe. I wonder what really happened.

Is it possible that all these limits on visas are to discourage so many Chinese students from applying to American universities? Clearly, there's some sort of conflict of interest...the universities would love to have all of these Chinese students paying full tuition (often made by corrupt parents here), and the US government is worried about educating an entire generation's worth of wealthy young Chinese, who probably have every intention to bring back the skills they'll learn to China in order to benefit their mother country.

I've been helping Chinese students to apply for US F1 visas for years, and in my experience there are several aspects about this situation that I've always found rather alarming (please keep in mind this does not apply to ALL of them):

1. Their parents are, 98% of the time, government officials in high positions either in Kunming or elsewhere in Yunnan (many from places like Gejiu, Yuxi, Baoshan, Wenshan, Lincang, etc.)

2. The vast majority of these students have horrible English skills, and many of them pay for a year of language training at the university they wish to attend - this costs as much as tuition for a regular student, and if they pass their English exams at the end, they're in.

3. More than 3/4 of the documents I'd examine and help organize were horrible fakes, or entirely unbelievable. Surprisingly, most of the students were open about this and told me directly they were all fake (TIC?).

4. Of those documents, most of the nonsense ones were when their parents in government were making a combined RMB 70,000 per year, but could afford nearly RMB 300,000 per year to send their children to top schools in America.

5. In addition, every middle school, high school, and university in this province is apparently ready and willing to produce fake credentials for students either with money or connections. I've looked at High School transcripts and those from Yunnan University where the applying student had an average score of 98% in all of their courses. ALL of them.

The worst part was that these students were getting into GREAT universities without having to take IELTS or TOEFL. Rather, they got around it by taking a year of English courses, which would typically cost anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 per year.

I was speaking to a friend of mine who's an attorney in New York the other week, and his firm deals with a lot of Chinese clients buying property in the United States. Now, more than ever, more and more Chinese are trying to get to the United States despite our apparent economic failures.

The vast majority of Chinese students applying to study in the United States simply don't deserve to be there. It's a shame, as American students struggling with loans and crippling debt have to compete with the sons and daughters of Chinese officials literally swimming in money. Maybe it says more about the US than it does about China?

Wow, I remember this woman confronting me several years ago...is she still making the rounds these days? I remember smelling something fishy and avoided her like the plague...some guys at the table next to us bit and took the bait. I wonder if that's some of you? It was also for a TV show if I remember correctly.

Yunnan is screwed if this goes through.