I have never seen an accident with a bus that I could clearly blame on the bus driver - bus drivers seem to be pretty good, and cabbies aren't bad, it's the private car drivers who cause the problems, and one reason is that most of them haven't been driving for very long. But yeah, there's little respect for, and little enforcement of, traffic regulations, which seem to be taken as suggestions rather than rules. However, I would rather put up with this behavior than with foreigners (read: westerners, for the most part) who go around being self-righteous. Right: the traffic could be better, but obsessing about it and getting all moralistic/legalistic about it is a sure path to the creation of a much more unpleasant social atmosphere.
I'm already depressed by air pollution when I see it - don't drive, or take taxis unless you need them.
Altitude of Kunming and Dali is about the same as that of Denver or Kabul, a bit more than half that of Lhasa. I don't know what this has to do with anything. However, it's possible to die from sudden arrival in Lhasa without acclimatization (airplanes, the train), though of course very few people do. Effect of altitude on the body works like this: the difference between sea level and, say, 1000 feet, is less than the difference between, say, 1000 and 2000 feet, or 6000 and 7000 feet - it affects the body along a rising curve, up to around 17,000 feet or so, after which the body can adjust temporarily (for a few months, but there begins to be a downhill slope around this altitude), if acclimatization is intelligently gradual (if not done you're taking a very serious risk) - but the human body cannot adjust permanently to altitudes higher than that, and there are no permanent human communities above that approximate altitude. I don't think altitude-caused depression in Kunming is anything to worry about, except perhaps for a very few individuals who have some particular physiological problem with it (acclimatization is weird - there are 25-year-olds who find it difficult and 60-year-olds who have little trouble). I haven't met anyone who's moved here from lower altitudes with such problems here, as far as they & I know - a good percentage of the population have moved here from lower altitudes, and it shouldn't have anything to do with being a foreigner. Speaking personally, I find this altitude makes me feel good (I'm over 60, but I acclimatized pretty well when I was in my early 20s too, although I grew up at 500 feet) - 6000 feet isn't really much.
Lot of bad driving in Kunming, it's not racist to point this out. Best to take the bus, bicycle or the metro, or walk. One good thing is that there is not much fast driving in Kunming, cf. the US, much of Europe, Thailand and many other places.
I guess what is meant by Kunming being a 'rural city' is that there are a lot of people moving to Kunming, and to other towns and cities, from the countryside.
@Tom: My point is that it's all promoted in the name of nationalism, which is the smokescreen, and a necessary one, to cover the kind of unacceptable truth that you discuss.
As for conservative opposition in Europe, and the 'patriotic freedom loving revolutionary spirit' in the US (what might these words actually relate to - the US Democratic Party? Or the Republicans? I think they're all Republicrats), which seem pretty much the same to me, I pretty much see people, or at the very least, their governments, as operating behind the smokescreen too, although there are perhaps more people in Europe who can see a least a little bit through it.
The student who made the speech is deep behind the smokescreen as well. Obviously, no?
@Haali, I think that's weird too. Note that the English on the sign in the toilets of trains states: "Please flush closet pot" - train cars built & designed many years ago, yet nobody bothered to offer 100rmb or so to some average wandering native-English speaker before they put these signs in virtually every toilet in train car on one of the world's largest RR networks - wtf?
Same syndrome everywhere in China - yet, although I can read and write Chinese, I seriously doubt that I'd design any sign in Chinese characters for exhibition in another country without bothering to find a native Chinese speaker to advise me.
Self-reliance is wonderful.
No particular historical justice that everybody's got to learn English these days, but that's the international language we have, and that's why foreigners can get teaching jobs here, as well as in so many other places.
@Peter: All respects to Orwell. However, if you want to jump on somebody for not telling the truth, or what they believe to be the truth, there's no point in concentrating on universities when our entire media environment, from the advertising industry to government spin-PR to other, numerous types of insidious media, the goals of all of which are to bend what is believed to be truth when it is not a straightforward matter of lying, I think the universities come off well - in most places, for that matter - relative to the media environment around them, which is fueled primarily by the desire to gain or maintain wealth and/or power - and yes, academics are subject to this too, but most do not put themselves into the serious acquire-wealth/power professions, where deceit becomes not-yet-quite universal. Competitive-rational arguments in universities are more likely, I think, to expose deceit than asking questions at press conferences or complaining to people engaged heavily in economic competition.
But hey! no guarantees.
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.
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.
Chinese student apologizes after Maryland graduation speech sparks firestorm
Posted by@Tom: My point is that it's all promoted in the name of nationalism, which is the smokescreen, and a necessary one, to cover the kind of unacceptable truth that you discuss.
As for conservative opposition in Europe, and the 'patriotic freedom loving revolutionary spirit' in the US (what might these words actually relate to - the US Democratic Party? Or the Republicans? I think they're all Republicrats), which seem pretty much the same to me, I pretty much see people, or at the very least, their governments, as operating behind the smokescreen too, although there are perhaps more people in Europe who can see a least a little bit through it.
The student who made the speech is deep behind the smokescreen as well. Obviously, no?
China to harmonize English nationwide
Posted by@Haali, I think that's weird too. Note that the English on the sign in the toilets of trains states: "Please flush closet pot" - train cars built & designed many years ago, yet nobody bothered to offer 100rmb or so to some average wandering native-English speaker before they put these signs in virtually every toilet in train car on one of the world's largest RR networks - wtf?
Same syndrome everywhere in China - yet, although I can read and write Chinese, I seriously doubt that I'd design any sign in Chinese characters for exhibition in another country without bothering to find a native Chinese speaker to advise me.
Self-reliance is wonderful.
China to harmonize English nationwide
Posted byNo particular historical justice that everybody's got to learn English these days, but that's the international language we have, and that's why foreigners can get teaching jobs here, as well as in so many other places.
Chinese student apologizes after Maryland graduation speech sparks firestorm
Posted by@Peter: All respects to Orwell. However, if you want to jump on somebody for not telling the truth, or what they believe to be the truth, there's no point in concentrating on universities when our entire media environment, from the advertising industry to government spin-PR to other, numerous types of insidious media, the goals of all of which are to bend what is believed to be truth when it is not a straightforward matter of lying, I think the universities come off well - in most places, for that matter - relative to the media environment around them, which is fueled primarily by the desire to gain or maintain wealth and/or power - and yes, academics are subject to this too, but most do not put themselves into the serious acquire-wealth/power professions, where deceit becomes not-yet-quite universal. Competitive-rational arguments in universities are more likely, I think, to expose deceit than asking questions at press conferences or complaining to people engaged heavily in economic competition.
But hey! no guarantees.
Chinese student apologizes after Maryland graduation speech sparks firestorm
Posted byMy comment above is on my previous comment, not on Peter's.