My experiences at the Chiang Mai consulate have generally been better than those with Chinese immigration officials in Hong Kong, and the folks there are friendlier.
I think laotou's advice is good advice to a Christian. I don't begin to buy what Gracejin says but I do believe that Christian ideology can be usefully directed to deal with social concerns. It can also be used to promote bunk. Fact that I look for a different rationale to deal with human problems doesn't mean I have to negate decent efforts by decent people, Christian or not, to deal with them. Christianity has a mixed record in dealing with social problems, as does every other ideology. It's worth the trouble to argue about ideologies, but it's stupid not to accept decent goals and results, regardless of where they're coming from. We're never all going to agree about everything, and if we did I'd really begin to worry about widespread brain control - in fact I already do, evidence is everywhere (read Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, on the US media) - in SOME ways Chinese media control is more honest - everybody knows it exists, and that's an advantage.
Like I said, I think Grace's focus is pretty nonsensical, but there is plenty of Christian work going on that is not nonsensical - Grace, look around, & don't buy ideas just because they either come or don't come from some category you happen to think 'must be' correct.
@HFCampo: Sorry, I still don't understand why metal particulates in the air won't blow away like everything else (dust, etc.) in the air.
Not too clear about what you mean by north & south. Suggest you see the city before you choose where to live.
@Liumingke: You're right, the term 'fact' is much abused.
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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.
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.
Too bourgeois.
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.
Ain't no flies on Salvador's.
Going remote for new year: Celebrating on the Nanding River
Posted byI went with 3 other westerners to a Wa festival in Ximeng about 8-10 years ago - one of our number knew somebody who knew somebody, and the 4 of us got free hotel rooms (there couldn't have been more than about 5 other westerners at most there, and we were obviously invited so that the CCBC camera and other coverage would perhaps appeal to more foreign tourists). The festival was essentially a tourist show, very well choreographed and so forth, enjoyable, not 'authentic', with scores, perhaps over a hundred, of group dancers in a big outdoor amphitheatre which sat several thousands. Evening, in an indoor theatre, there was a play featuring the Wa, supposed to show their rise from ugly-barbarian savagery thanks to the arrival of PLA soldiers. Point is, this thank-God-for-the-PLA theme was embarrassingly overdone, reminded me of some of the more cardboard elements of dance of the Cultural R. period, and I almost walked out, as it seemed to me so single-issue and propagandistic that I felt it amounted to pandering to Han-cultural attitudes about the inferiority of the non-Han, especially the Wa - it was all Party propaganda about the end of headhunting etc, otherwise nothing really about the Wa. I wonder if this emphasis is particularly strong in such tourist performances concerning the Wa, given that they present easy targets for such a treatment. Yeah, I've read that certainly many Wa were indeed glad to see the end of headhunting, and I'm not necessarily disputing that it has been good that their long resistance, carried out from their mountains, to incorporation into a wider national society had finally come to an end back in the 1950s - however, the show I saw reminded me of the kind of thing that had once entertained the prejudices of 'White' people in the old American South, or in South Africa.
Popular night market locations closed, ban appears permanent
Posted byWouldn't worry about that happening, Lester - I've seen no indications of it around town.
Popular night market locations closed, ban appears permanent
Posted byI take cloudtrapezer' comment, or anyway most of it. As for moving out of the city, another choice would be to use public transportation or a bicycle within it as much as possible.
Premier Li Keqiang visits Yunnan, stressing anti-poverty measures
Posted byumm - capitalism/
Premier Li Keqiang visits Yunnan, stressing anti-poverty measures
Posted byIf Beijing wants to promote this they'd better do something about all the bloody hukou problems that have contributed to different classes of citizenship and have fueled China's capitalist rise by providing cheap labor with little recourse, thereby enabling rather serious economic differences so that the Chinese economy now competes 'successfully' with that of other countries on the usual tilted table of global capitalim.