Forums > Living in Kunming > Gift shopping in Kunming for a local A worthy gift would be to learn her native tongue... to traverse online with help of your Chinese friends/staffs to find her novel items nonexistent in Kunming.
You often take her out shopping around town. So whatever you buy in this city she has already seen, which dampens the element of surprise.
Taking the time and effort to learn simple Chinese online lingo would not only impress her, but serves a beneficial learning curve for yourself. A long-term investment to further improve relationship with your child in the 5G+ future. Especially if you intend to stay in China for the long haul. The Chinese internet isn't going anywhere in the decades to come.
You gotta start sometime, why not now?
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@Jan: "... arranging the delivery while preserving an element of surprise would be difficult."
Shipping and package retrievals have been significantly upgraded in the last two years. I'm sure you've already seen the green “Hive Boxes” (aka “feng chao” / 丰巢) placed outside or inside commercial & residential buildings.
All package delivery companies, even EMS, will use Hive Boxes upon customer request. Couriers will store your parcel in one of the container slots and send you a text password combination to open at your own convenience.
Retrievals are free for first 24 hours. If you collect your package within 24-hour time period and the Hive Box screen displays 1 rmb, it is just a misleading donation plea. Just skip (跳过) the message as the payment isn’t mandatory until after 24-hours. 1 rmb fee per day afterwards.
I’ve seen people open Hive Box by entering passwords after 30 days. The person was required to transfer 29 rmb via barcode to open. Convenient for those who’ve been out of town and needed long-term storage.
For maximum privacy. Don’t leave your frequently used mobile number for shipping contact info when making online purchases. This would cut down on annoying call solicitations and spam texts. Leave your seldom-used, secondary SIM card. Just follow Hive Box official account on Wechat. Register by verifying with said secondary number. When packages arrive, Hive Box passwords will be sent via WeChat message in lieu of text messages or calls from courier to your regular mobile phone. Granted you may need to answer their call if Hive Box is full.
To say nothing of convenience, the Hive Box not only maintains privacy and anonymity of recipient, but safety. Especially if recipient is a home alone, underaged female.
If Hive Box is absent in your vicinity, or if particular packages are too big for the Hive Box, there are plenty of package collection services around town. They are called “代收,” which may come in the form of mom & pop shops that charge 1 rmb a day to store your packages. Download Alibaba’s Cainiao (菜鸟) app to find these designated collection centers nearest you.
Getting Away: Xishan
Posted byLinked from Best of Kunming Awards 2018, this post is in need of an update. The convenience of KRT XiShan Park Station at end of Line 3 with the blossoming of traditional Yunnan eateries along the mouth of the entrance.
Bread-wrapped man devoured by gulls in Kunming
Posted byReading and reading... waiting for the Stephen-King-esque horror to unfold. Thanks Pat for click-baiting your followers. No entrails spillin' out this time. lol
For regular seagull feeders, bring your empty bags to 100 meters up South Gate of Green Lake to fill up on free gull food pellets (鸥粮) provided by the city government. Monday - Friday around 9am. The avian "man-eaters" will be waiting.
NGO sues Yunnan dam developer over environmental degradation
Posted byWhat's your interpretation of progress & development?
66 million 农民 Chinese were lifted out of poverty within the last five years. 500 million within the last three decades.
Some would argue that is progress. The benefits of development.
Granted President Xi would be the first to admit mission is far from accomplished.
NGO sues Yunnan dam developer over environmental degradation
Posted byA bit of devil advocacy in the second half of my post.
Firstly, @mike's geological history is fascinating. It explains the eastward bending of the river system.
Yunnan only receives the tributaries, while the actual Yangtze River cuts through our northern provincial neighbors like Sichuan (e.g. Jiuzhaigou National Park) and snaking through Chongqing's central district.
The breadth of Yangtze is remarkable. Flowing down from Tanggula Mountain of Tibet at peak elevation of over 5,000 meters. This river not only has erected cities & civilizations like the flow of collective "tired and poor" hands of ruralites... but cultivated the ecology for forests and wild life prior to the dawn of humans.
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That said, it's promising that China is reducing coal-fired power plants with renewable hydropower energy in an effort to curb climate change. Yet when hydropower plants are excessively built to overcapacity for profit-driven energy exports at the expense of local ecology, the amount of oversight from Beijing comes to question.
Below is a simple chart showing "Share of global hydropower capacity, by country:"
www.theatlas.com/charts/Hka8gcGeQ
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Yes, China leads in hydropower capacity by a huge margin. A surplus over consumption for the time being. However, the bigger picture of greater precedence over peafowls is untold by above piece.
Neighboring nations facing power outages like Pakistan, Laos, Myanmar, and even Russia are in need of electricity imports from China.
China's State Grid adopts the UHV (ultra high-voltage) cable technology to transfer said electricity to energy deprived regions in not only Asia, but to Africa, and as far as Germany.
The State Grid's long-game is to deploy world's first "global electricity grid" standard. Potentially expanding regional power grids of clean energy to more remote corners, such as in South America and Africa. In an effort of consolidation, China has already invested heavily in numerous power utilities overseas. From Portugal to the Philippines.
This grand ambition is not only a win-win in tackling global warming while vying for industry dominance as offshore hydroelectric projects are built by the Chinese. But expanding access of clean energy to remote regions lacking in infrastructures also serves a global humanitarian purpose: the betterment of societies and lives.
The balancing acts between global warming & local environmental protection, and between profit and diplomacy. Unfortunately, peafowls won't have a say in all of this.
Alliance Française opens in Yunnan's capital city
Posted byNot sure if Germany or UK subsidiaries of Airbus would embrace the idea their proprietary know-hows could potentially be reversed engineered by China's ambitious homegrown COMAC.