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Forums > Travel Yunnan > 小矮人王国 - Kingdom of the Dwarfs

Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?

This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.

The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.

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Forums > Food & Drink > clean and safe chinese food

Relax, you'll be all right - where are you from? Of the thousands of restaurants in Kunming there are very few that might be labeled 'not Chinese' - that's a pretty small world. You perhaps have a case of 'new arrival gut' (having been elsewhere in China doesn't solve this, as bacteria etc. do not vary according to political geography). Could just be the local spiciness.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Vegetarian - to be or not to be?

Being willing to kill an animal yourself is the only honesty here.

Vegetarianism is probably the future - human population growth, etc. And it will be nice to relate to aniimals that have not been reduced to vegetable slave status, though they might simply all be killed off, with the exception of the dog servants, whom I like.

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@Magnifico: I don't see American Gangster, which is a film I really like, as alluding to government conspiracy regarding drugs - it alludes to the operations of certain criminal individuals within the US military in Southeast Asia who make use of US coffins etc. to bring drugs into the US for organized crime - not US government policy or that of any government-established black box operations located within it. Anyway, the film is fictionalized, although based on real events, and the facts concerning drug movements etc. are not quite the facts of the events. Great film though.

HFCampo: The EU, whatever its problems, is not totalitarian.
People are murdered everyday - perhaps so, why do you want to contribute?
The US is not a fascist country, at least not yet.
If 'we' have no choice about US-government decisions about what is a drug and what should be illegal, why do you want to kill more people based on these definitions?
If the US government, border police etc. are all in on the drug racket (and at least some of them have to be), then what authority is it that you think would be able to go around killing illegal drug users?
Finally, why are you more interested in some totalitarian control of illegal drug users than you are in the lives of enormous numbers of people?
Your whole approach is frightening. What do you value here?

@HFCampo: The point about illegal drugs is that they are not subject to such a program - i.e., they're uncontrolled, illegal. So who would be able to do this? Anyone who did would be knowingly responsible for the death of another - i.e., random murder of drug users.
The main problem here, of course, is that most of us would not condone such murder, as I think most of us, most of the time, at least when not defending our own lives, consider that the lives of millions of human beings are more important than the control of illegal drugs. You may have a different moral point of view, which you'd have to explain, but I don't know how you could make any stable society out of one, unless you assume totalitarian control of populations, which is ultimately impossible and the members of which would scarcely be human anyway - mere objects. Then maybe it wouldn't matter to anyone whether they lived or died, and they might not know the difference.
As for all drug users dying off, I don't think you understand why people choose to use drugs.
finally, you still haven't told us what an illegal 'drug' is, except that it seems to be whatever some government, which you don't respect and which you say pushes drugs, says it is.

You may be volunteering to enforce fascism, for all you to know.

Reviews

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Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.

As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.

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Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.

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Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.