Can't people just talk about their experiences, good or bad without being called moaners and complainers? In reality, you're the one who is complaining now.

You obviously have nothing constructive to add to this thread so....

Advising to learn the local systems is my constructive point, which you obviously find a useless piece of information and will continue to make the same mistake and continue to wonder why

Learning the taxi shift change will not help you when you still need a taxi at that time. Learning bus routes does not help when there is no bus stop near you or time is limited.

Not sure what any of this has to do with peoples' salaries anyway.

Lousy experience I'm sure, Voltaire - shift change time is bad for getting a cab. My sympathies.

The shift change problem is a problem everywhere, not dependant on which tier the cities are.
It is something to do with a law, the details of which I forget.
I spent 5 years in a tier one city and you could not get a taxi for love nor money around 18:00.

We use taxi almost exclusively to get to and from airport, train and bus stations when we have too much luggage for other transport options. Taxis from airport use meter, but the other way it's always haggling.

Recently we used Didi to get a car in "early" morning to the airport and it was a pleasant experience compared to Kunming taxis.

Agree with Janjal and Krismoonpie. If you are unhappy with hailing taxis, didi is as described, clean cars good drivers, timely, no laowai hassles. Clearly a better alternative assuming you can work an app in Chinese and have online payments.

Bit off topic, but tier1 is Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. The list can vary from source to source, but having traveled China extensively, these are the only four I think do classify. Qingdao is a very good tier2, on tier1 on some lists, but having explored Qingdao, I personally wouldn't rank it in the powerhouse and civil governance levels of the previous 4. But as a seaside town, it's number 1 on my list, but I'm biased by buying bags of draft for a few rmb, brewery2 of course.

There aren't shift change issues city wide for Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou anymore, possibly in some outlying residential areas, not sure. Mostly usual rush hour and rain making taxis impossible. Can't comment on Beijing because my friends and just about everyone I meet exclusively use Uber, which will soon be part of didi.

Chongqing had the absolute worst shift changes issues which were compounded by geography and natural gas fill up station backups.

I'm new in Kunming, actually I will go in a few days,

My second thought was " I will take a taxi from the aertport to University for not to complicate my life, 80 yuans, but will be easier and comfortable .. ".

But after reading all your comments, I returned to my first idea, take the Airport Bus n1 and walk for 10 minutes to get to my destination !!

Thank you all for your opinions, it is dificis for someone new in town control everything that can happen.

And the first days are usually hard, full of unexpected things and really tired for the trip ..

Thanks everyone for yours comments!!

We have never had problem taking taxi FROM airport to anywhere in the city, only the other way is troublesome.

The taxis from airport (the official ones behind the usually empty queue - not the people picking you up inside and outside of the airport) have always used meter without requesting to do so.

The only problem could be if your Chinese is not good and are unable to give the exact address to the driver.

I always make sure I have my destination address on my iPad whenever I need a taxi.