So tell us Yereth - what are the new changes going to be? Don't just spring them on us - give us a heads-up!

I agree with blubbfisk, shiny frames and shitty locks. The best thing to do is make ya bike look like someone can't sell it. Chances are that if you buy a new bike, it will look re-sellable for the first few months. This is the incentive for bike theft - resale value. I have seen a few times (outside North Railway Station) a women asking people if they need a cheap new bicycle (these are people riding pretty crap bikes stopped at the lights). I have a strong suspicion she is part of a bike theft gang...

I have 5 year old XT 10,000RMB (when new) mountain bike that is scratched up, I have put duct tape on the frame and keep it dirty. For almost a year I have been leaving it in all manner of places all over Kunming locked up with a normal bike lock to trees/lamposts etc. Never had anyone try and steal it and I suspect its for 2 reasons - bike thieves don't know their bike gear and they won't be able to easily resell it.

If you have your own MTB that looks a bit old, bring it. Chances are it won't be nicked because resale is impossible. If you buy a new bike here and want to leave it in random places - say goodbye to it every time you lock it to something with a local lock as you possibly won't get it back.

Cycling in Kunming is also really easy (not much in the way of hills) and I find it to be mostly pleasant. You have traffic all over the place from all directions at all times, but once you are used to this its quite easy and you can utilize it for when you want to go the wrong way against traffic too! I get knocked off my bike a LOT more by cars in the west than I do in Asia because drivers are a lot more aware of motorbikes/cyclists here - no cyclist rage.

Oh yeah - the OP didn't say weather they had a road bike or MTB - MTB is the better option here around the city (inconsistent road conditions), however I know some roadies who have some nice routes out of the city on what they say are really good roads. Either is fine but most people (including locals) buy mountain bikes here.

I have a high end Dell laptop which I bought in NZ about a year ago. I saw the same laptop in a number of Dell authorised dealers in HK the last time I was there so would second tigers comment about going to HK.

The problem with checking all your internal components in a laptop however is that they are a mission to get into and may void the warranty unless they are opened by an authorised person from the computer manufacturer. If its common practice to swap components in China, I would want it opened too, but doing so may be a mission... so I would second tigers comment and wait until my next trip to HK or Thailand where this is much less likely.

Another thing you could do however is download a program (or use a USB) before you leave the store with it that gives you a readout of the system information. The windows Accessories-System Tools-System Information will usually tell you most things but more indepth tools are available (telling you RAM manufacturer etc), something like www.belarc.com/free_download.html or www.gtopala.com/. This info is pretty damn hard to spoof so you should be able to rely on it.

My girlfriend told me that people don't help because of the legal precedents that have been set in China with people that have previously helped others. The Chinese courts have ruled in the past the the helper is liable for the care of the injured person - even though they had nothing to do with the accident. This came about when someone was hit by a person in a car who then drove off. Someone came to help the victim who then claimed later (probably to avoid the hospital bill) that the person who helped them was the same person that hit them. When this went to court the courts found in favour of the victim, not the helper. My girlfriend tells me there were a few high profile cases of this in a short period of time about 5 or 6 years ago, since then noone is willing to help others for fear of becoming a victim themselves. On top of that, group think kicks in really quickly here, if one person stands back, everyone stands back. I suspect if one person got involved quickly to save someone, everyone would get involved. And another problem is hardly anyone knows basic first aid here, so they probably think "I want to do something, but I really have no idea what and I could hurt the person more if I tried... maybe just record on my phone for the police/ambulance".

I have also observed Chinese people appear to be less sympathetic to people or animals in pain. Generally here there is a lesser respect for pain in others (although in the west sometimes we can be too empathetic) or even deaths of people they don't know (unless its hundreds or thousands of people). This is probably a social consequence of a massive population, but who knows?

I don't think Liumingke1234's comment is valid, I really don't see Chinese people being sadistic.

- Oh yeah, your Features/News/Travel pages (clicking on the links on the top) are all pretty bad for navigation. Recommend these are changed to have the photo that appears on your homepage for each story for the first 10 ordered by date. Add a tag map to the bottom which will enable the user to click to whichever tag interests them (like at the bottom of the Homepage) but restricted to only that section. Put a search at the top that restricts only to that section too. You could display search results in the same way with the pictures of the first top 10 items (2 columns probably 5 deep). Would make the pages actually interesting to look at rather than 40 lines of text to wade through.