''baozi for breakfast, some vegetables and tofu from the market for dinner.''
7 days a week? Sounds appetizing.. lol.
I could manage that two or three times a week (without the tofu )

@yankee00 I have only travelled within Sichuan, albeit quite widely therein. So Im a noob with regard to other cities. But yeah its happened a good few times alright. Its not that big a deal to me tho; these things happen. And for example most Chinese do not regard blood products as meat at all. So theres a cultural slant to it. Life's rich tapestry...

@mPRin, lol you can vary alot of things of course. My point is that it is very cheap to eat in Kunming, if you are willing to eat what the locals eat.

Anyone with a bit of confidence and a half decent phrase book should be able to order dinner the moment they step of the plane, not the toughest task in chinese language. A bit of 'na ge' although not polite, helped me in places when starting out lol

The 5000rmb guide not a good living amount unless you already got some savings in bank for the odd thing that's going to come up from time to time.

I live on about 3000 a month here, with some home made western extravagance (cheese on toast and sandwiches etc), but live in a fairly cheap place and don't go out much. Plus I bike everywhere, shop in dirty markets, eat cheaply (near vegetarian) and don't drink much.

Still, if I was working here, I would be wanting to get more than 8k a month after tax working part time, more if I was working full time. Dramatically more if I was working in my field of expertise (like 20k+ a month).

While the average wage in all of China is said to be about 3500 kuai a month now, but that is for full time work. Local friends of mine easily make 10k plus though in full time work (sales and one runs her own marketing business), so it isn't that hard to make decent money, even for locals. Normal 9-5 office jobs though are around 3-6k, depending on your guangxi level I suspect!

Its amazing the difference on the East Coast cities though. If you are a foreign expert in Shanghai and making less than about 25k you are getting ripped off!

@Blobbles How cheap is your place? Fairly decent area? I'm looking to move in the next couple of months. I'm paying 1500 p/m at the moment for a two bed apartment.

@Alex: yeah, I don't know what I was thinking - pinyin in restaurants is indeed not common, tho there are plenty of restaurants (not the majority, of course - the majority of Chinese restaurant owners surely cannot be expected to go around worrying about the minority of their customers who might not speak or read the national language) that have English on the menu.
Frankly I think all these concerns are pretty minor - does anyone expect to go to a foreign country and NOT have some problems adjusting? And obviously it's only the foreigners who can reasonably be expected to do the great majority of the adjusting. Cultural differences are indeed just that, and if there weren't any the world would be pretty damn boring and very mono-brain unidimensional. Is it all always convenient or 'fair'? No. Life is so damn hard!!

@mmkunmingteacher

Thanks for the personal attack, quite a vicious one too. Would you be accusing me of dementia or schizophrenia or maybe a speech disorder? Also, I don't like Woody Allen movies, but if he made one about life in China, I would watch it.

so to quote you:
@AlexKMG, It sounds like you live in a secretly-filmed Woody Allen movie. Seriously, if it is that difficult to order baozi, then maybe there are other (psychological) issues involved.

@AlexKMG

Relax; it was just a joke. No, I was not actually accusing you of anything. I just thought it was funny to imagine anyone (not you in particular) having all of these terrible troubles every time they ordered baozi. Sorry that it came across the wrong way: I honestly just meant it as a joke, and I did not mean to seriously accuse you of having psychological problems. I apologize.