Forums > Living in Kunming > The Horror

Stories like these are in the news here just about every day:

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-04/09/content_12297017.htm

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-04/10/content_12299388.htm

I brought this up with some Chinese people and got more than I wanted to hear.
It would seem that eating anything outside is a roulette shot at best.

All restaurants supposedly use horrid million-times reused oil. I have myself seen some oil deliveries, and it was a nasty-looking black semi-liquid in filthy repurposed plastic barrels.
I worked at Arthur Treachers' back in the States, and even there we'd change the oil like once a month (just kept adding). Granted, the owner was a Korean cheapskate, and a Jehovah's Witness to boot.
I heard that some of the restaurants supposedly use grease that poor people scoop up floating in gutters. One guy said that he'd seen one of these specialists going at it with his scoop.

Fruit (bananas, melons, among others) being picked unripened, then injected with chemicals to make them look ripe, but not go bad as fast as they normally would.

Same with meat, full of chemicals to keep it from going bad. Not hard to believe; a lot of restaurants keep a lot of their food outside fridges, and very few seem to have freezers.

Rice bleached and scented with more poisonous goodies.

And my beloved huoguo. Heard this from people including former staff – the "tang" they pour into the hotpot is laced with chemicals so bad they make the brain-lesion-inducing MSG look like Wild Oats' organic GojiBerry juice.

SO.

Share your stories. What have you heard, what do you believe, what do you do or not do, eat or not eat in this land of omnipresent chemicals.

Haha, the top ad banner on those China Daily articles is from ChemChina, their proud slogan being "Life needs Chemicals".
Talk about synergy.

If you're in advertising, go drink a guo-ful of hotpot tang right now.

Forums > Living in Kunming > How ”””fast”””” are your internets?

I've been using this speed-test:

www.speedtest.net/

and have been getting download speed of 0.3Mbps and upload speed of 0.1Mbps, at both my old and new apartments.

This is beyond pathetic, not in the least because I have the 118-rmb/month "3M" (=3Mbps) "service" with China Telecrap.

Please do the test (a few times at different times of day would be best, as sometime you get higher or lower than normal speeds momentarily) and post the results.

I'd especially be curious to see if other providers (Unicom?) are any better.

I asked a student in a Chenggong dorm to do the test, as she always complains about how unbelievably slow their internet is. I thought, figures, school takes their tuition and gives them crap internet and cramped dorm-rooms in return. But she got 5M download speed!

If anybody knows anything about getting internets faster than a 1994 dial-up, I'd be much obliged for the info.

Best,
n

Forums > Living in Kunming > Kiss your teaching jobs guh-bye

china's gonna be all over these obedient teachers like flies on stink:

finance.yahoo.com/[...]

they won't buy them, of course, oh no. they will invite the Filipino company here, propose a joint venture, set up a factory, have employees figure out all the know-怎么, and then cancel the contract, only to set up their own production and make 'inspired homages', which they will then trumpet on cctv as yet-another giant leap in the country's technological prowess (like they did with japanese bullet trains and russian jet fighters).

check out this rolls roy—um, geely:

www.dailymail.co.uk/[...]

the three differences being price, quality and the fact that it has ONE seat in the back, a throne for an oligarch....

geely's supposed to start selling in the u.s. in 2011....the detroitization of america has come full circle.

Forums > Living in Kunming > Kiss your teaching jobs guh-bye

and say arigato, roboto선생-선생님 (in Filipino, if you can)

news.yahoo.com/[...]

Forums > Living in Kunming > Where to Exchange Money at the Best Rate?

Looking to turn about 1200 USD into RMB.
I always go to Bank of China with about a 100, but I'm guessing that their rate isn't that great, which would come to a good chunk of cash with a 1,000+.
Anyplace else with better rates?
Thanks,
N