Dudeson's, oh I do agree with you, don't get me wrong. I believe that I, and many teachers I know, are worth much, much more than 5,000 a month. My only point was that, if 5,000 is indeed one's salary, then that person can live just fine on it. I do believe that teachers should be paid more!

mPRin, baozi for breakfast, some vegetables and tofu from the market for dinner — most Chinese live on much less than that, and raise families on it. I used to spend tons of money until I got a Chinese girlfriend. She showed me what life in China is really like, and now we live like kings without spending much. I think it just depends on whether one is willing to live like the Chinese live, rather then living in a sort of expat, Western bubble world. I am NOT saying you do that, just making a general point. For example, the cost of one meal at Salvador's or Slice of Heaven could feed an entire family for a few days in most most Chinese households.

P.S. I like Salvador's and Slice, and I do make the occasional trip to those places. I am just talking about life on a daily basis.

Hi, that sounds so-so, our institute do need a native English speaker lady who can teach dance. For a part-time English teacher, it is 150RMB/H. Benefits for a full time teacher,
7500-13000 a month plus bonus incentives
Flexible and understanding staff support to help with getting settled
Visa - Business visa (F), Employment visa (z)
Flight allowance: 7,000RMB – Following completion of contract
Paid holiday leave
Continued academic training
Medical and accident insurance.

Hope you can consider about us, thanks a lot! you can reach me by loveyouyou198756@126.com or phone 15608713640

spam spam spam spam
spam spam spam spam
wonderful spam glorius spam

I am on a 5000 ish salary here, and for the second semester I have got another part-time job to get more money.
It's not easy for everyone to live like a Chinese. First, the food : if you are vegetarian and/or don't like spicy food, good luck on finding anything that will suit your tastes in Kunming outside of the western bubble !
As well, if you don't speak mandarin, I doubt it will be easy for you to order baozi for breakfast or noodles for dinner... Having a Chinese bf/gf change everything and make your life way easier, but if you are alone and don't speak the language, those small things will be a struggle.

Finally, you will never get the prices a Chinese will have because you know what, you are a laowai. Depends on the place and the good to buy, the difference can be somewhere between a few kuais to a bunch of them.

All in all, don't expect that it will be easy to live like a Chinese here, especially if you don't speak the language and don't have Chinese bf/gf.

I will say that 5000 is enough to live in Kunming, even on the laowai mode but without travelling or saving money. All your 5000 will be spent on apartment/ food/ drinks/ going out.

@Karina: yes, obviously one needs to learn the language. I know several vegetarians who manage to eat outside the western bubble, and not all Chinese dishes are spicy, even in Kunming. As for prices in restaurants, they're almost always written down on the menu. It strikes me that it would be very difficult to fail to be able to order noodles, even with the most rudimentary Chinese. I may have occasionally paid a little too much for stuff in the market, but it could never have been more than a very few kuai. And I am a laowai.

as long as you can point and say wo yao, you get. most small places you can see the food to point at it.

You cannot point the food on each restaurants. Most of the small restaurants and baozi shops don't have pictures on the menu and the food is prepared in the back kitchen, so I don't get how you can order without being able to read characters.

Anyway, my point was despite what some people say on this forum, it's not that easy to live like a Chinese here. Again, not all of us can afford the time and the cost of studying Chinese for 6 months or a year before coming here for work. And it seems that the person who started the thread will come right away to work without having too much knowledge of the chinese language.

@Karina17, I must humbly disagree. It is not hard to learn to ask for "4 baozi please" in Chinese, or to learn the names of a few vegetables at the market. Cook at home, and you do not have to make it spicy. Also, once you develop a relationship with your vendors, the foreigner price does down — this really happens. Or learn a few phrases of negotiation. Also, if you think paying an extra two kuai for some carrots is expensive, then why would you eat at Western restaurants, where things are thirty or forty times more expensive? Why not make some Chinese friends and learn to live the real Chinese way, instead of insisting on re-creating the West in China?

By the way, ordering baozi is NOT hard: "Sige baozi. Xie xie."