User profile: Alien

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Random Acts of Kindness or RAK's

@blobbles: Fine story, but it wouldn't affect my faith in Chinese people one way or the other, since I'd hesitate to generalize so broadly. Similarly, I think I'd hesitate to generalize about the people in your country (whatever it is) just from this action of yours (which was obviously the right thing to do). The categories Chinese/foreigner are useful for some things, but they don't need to be dragged into everything (no criticism meant) - most of us can recognize that any 2 persons are different or similar from each other in any number of ways (male/female, old/young, farmer/lawyer, etc.), but we are often encouraged to think excessively in terms of national identity by those who run nations and want followers.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Why do miserable foreigners remain in China?

I think it shows something - I'm not quite sure what - that annoyances one runs into 'back home', wherever that may be, are seen as specific (e.g., behaviour of a particular cabbie, or even cabbies in general) and don't lead to answers like 'I dislike America (or whichever country you come from) because lookit what happened to me in this taxicab?' - while when abroad everything is always being considered in terms of the whole country. I'm not saying that generalizations are impossible or useless, I'm just saying that a fixation on making them, whether positive or negative, may simply be a sign of naivete, and/or the knee-jerk nationalist thought we've all been drilled with, regardless of wherever we are 'from', since childhood.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > 101 Good Reasons to live in China

I love the way in China, after you've been here a number of years, you don't have to waste your mental energy with questions about liking or disliking 'China' all the time, but can relax and go about your business and follo your interests. Sort of like becoming accomodated to where you are anywhere else on the planet.

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...like I was saying, his book People and Forests - Yunnan Swidden Agriculture in Human-=Ecological Perspective, published 2001 by Yunnan Education Publishing House, available at Mandarin Books. In English - translated by Magnus Fiskesjo, whose dissertation on the Wa is also very interesting and informative.

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Good link, Voltaire - so there are some problems with such schemes, but anybody thinking they're more serious than the ones caused by everybody driving around in private cars and taking taxis alla time might benefit from a stroll down to the corner to watch the traffic for awhile.

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.