no, i'm not American. and i say live and let live. to answer your question, i think that if you really don't like your environment then move on. there's always something that we'd like to be different or to change if we can but that's life... no need for endless rants on the internet! by the way, plenty of us are happy with our lives in kunming and i wish you well with your time here.

Run, crazy Laowai, Run! Lol shout

I am so happy for all these "happy" people in Kunming and that they have found a place on the planet Earth that they love and enjoy and cannot find anything to criticism about. That they have found a place that adds no chemicals to their pork and beef products unlike the US (that at least has an FDA), and all those articles in the China news about them doing just that is a western conspiracy. When others are happy I feel better. And debaser (what a positive name) is obviously an America hater and I would gladly choose ham fro the US over the processed canned stuff they make here any day of the century. And in my backwards country I can even buy ham and fine cheese imported from Europe and found them wonderful and superior in taster, but can I do that here? Where is the German or French ham here Mr. "if you don't love it leave it?" Surely not at the French Cafe.

And I got a breakfast last time I was in Dali that said Yunnan ham. I know all about Yunnan ham. Guess what they served me? CHINESE SPAM from a can!!! I am sick of these lies and scams.

I am sadly not one of these happy with eating oily, spicy noodles three times a day type of people. It is a shortcoming on my part. I see a wonderful, snow cap mountain but use my ill-fitting shoes bought in Kunming China (where I cannot get shoes!) to turn over a stone to reveal the ugly bugs hiding under it. It is my curse maybe, but it also seems odd to for people to say "get out and let us be happy here" rather than look for the value in what some tortured soul may have to say about a place and then try to resolve the problem. If poor Gaoxing had had more support he would still be among us, maybe speaking better Chinese and getting laid finally.

I love tuna (as blobbles suggests) and the ham issue is only ONE example. I could go on and on. Why do I have to struggle to get the basics of a half ass decent meal (rice noodles in spicy gutter oil -and I would say the vast majority of restaurants use that stuff, not a minority, and ALL of them in my area do-is not a decent meal). I cannot, anywhere in my area of Kunming in the NW get: yellow butter, good peanut butter, mayonnaise, mustard, pasta, and on and on and on. Why not? Why, why, why do I have to take a bus allllllll the way to Metro to buy a can of Tuna? I could buy some at Ripoff Paul's on wen hua xiang if I were rich I guess. Sadly, I am a man of modest if not simple means and can't pay 3 or 4 dollars for a can of tuna or sardines, the same ones that BACK IN THE USA cost less than a buck. There is a Walmart in my area. But they do not even have mayonaisee there or yellow mustard (in fact I have a jar of mustard in the frig, but nothing to eat with it. Sometimes I just squirt some on a piece of the horrible sweet bread I bought at the little bread store with the rude counter help and imagine there is a slice of real ham on it. Sometimes I can almost taste it). No cheese other than the Chinese cheese. Chinese cheese. haha. It is sliced processed stuff that sticks all to the wrapper when I try to get it out and is barely cheaper than the Kraft product and made with no dairy product that I can detect, but I have no choice other than to do without again. Why? This is Walmart right? From the good ol' US of A? The greatest nation in the history of the human race, and yet I cannot get a package of sandwich ham or Kratf cheese there, or a jar or yellow mustard. But they do have a section of shelves about 50 fifty feet long with the same rice cracker product. A red bag and green bag of the same rice crackers, maybe a couple thousand bags of these. But do they have one friggin' box of Nabisco saltines in the foreign food section? No. They only have some noodles from Korea and some hard candy from Thailand. So I guess in the US we can have food from Canada and call it foreign food now. "Oh look mommy, instant noodles from Korea for 10 RMB! These have to be different from the instant noodles we buy here in in China for 2RMB!!!

Allow me, please, to rant a little more. Is it asking that much? I pay taxes in China so have that right do I not? I have no idea whose packets my taxes are lining, but I am paying them. I have two very good examples of how miserable things here can be for somebody, like myself, who enjoys real food once in a while, not every day, but sometimes.

1) The school I work out told us they were going to take us to a Christmas dinner at some big ass 5 star hotel. I have had some meals there before and while expensive were pretty darned good. One issue here was that there had been some complaints to the school (and not from me) from other teachers that all the meals the school took us to were too spicy and a bit strange. Plates of spicy pickled chicken feet were not what we all were used to for a dinner. The school felt our pain and showed us the brochure for the meal at this place. Oh, it looked so wonderful. The items were listed with pictures. Yes my friends, there was HAM, HAM, HAM! And while there was no turkey there was going to a nice prepared chicken and some duck, dressing and gravy and hot bread and even cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, if the menu was accurate. I was over my moodiness and was happy and my wife even was a bit concerned as I seemed a bit too jocular and merry. It was not like me to be so ecstatic, she warned to not over expect. TIC, right? But why not be happy, right? Why not have hope!

Well, dear friends, when the day came it was not the Christmas dinner, but the Christmas lunch buffet we were to meet for. And that was the end of it all. Life went from Technicolor to b/w in an instant. Much of my bitterness these days can be traced back to this nightmare meal. That one day. The food we had was nothing that was on the dinner menu, which no doubt cost more than the all you can meal we got. And what morsels did we have for our Christmas meal at the 5 star buffet? How about BBQ on a stick. Spicy vegetables. Rice. Rice noodle soup. Yes, that is right, mi xian for Christmas. Salads of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes with no dressing. Spicy this. Spicy that. Oily this. Oily that.

And you know what made it all worse? I will tell you. All these damned foreigners there walking around going "oh look at this, look a that! Yummy yummy yummy! So much to choose from, right Bill?

Ah yea, lemme see, I can have this type of noodle soup or that type. I am overwhelmed. They are those happy type who, I feel were equally disappointed, but wanted to make lemonaide out of the lemons that were just thrown in their face. Not me my friends. When the one lady asked me if I was excited by the selection I told her "no, not really. I could get all this in the school cafeteria and it will taste better there and be warm (since they no have the concept at buffets in China of keeping the food warm, just throwing in a serving pan and watching it get hard and cold). This is a bait and switch, they said Christmas dinner with HAM and now I am eating BBQ on a stick. Ohhhhhhh, I can't get that out in the alley ways behind the school every single day of my life!!!!" She laughed and walked off but she doesn't like me that much anyway, maybe I am too cheery for her. What a scam! But the school leaders who set the meal up were happy. "ummmmm.. spicy pork fat slices and oily spicy vegetables! Christmas dinner is so good! Ummm,,,is this what you eat for Christmas back in the USA Bill???" "Ah yea, spicy chicken head is a staple on our table every holiday."

This is just the local mass solipsism I discussed elsewhere, that everybody in the world simply will love local Kunming food, even on Christmas day. Their minds actually cannot think in terms of treating the laowai to a Christmas meal becuae in their thinking local Kunming voids all other food in the known universe. "How can anybody want potatoes and gravy and glazed ham when they can have spicy rice noodles?, Just like they did yesterday?"

2) I went out last night as I was hungry and walked up and down the little streets in my neighborhood looking for food. I felt dizzy really. I was so hungry. I felt a little crazy even. I walked up and down the street with the local bistros and street vendors. what was there to choose from?

A) 90% of the "restaurants" were noodle stands. they all served the exact same style of noodles. And they were all full of students and locals slurping away and gawking at me and giggling.

B) The rest were those places were you go and point at stuff and they go in the back and throw it i a vat of gutter oil and serve it to you covered in MSG. When it comes to not adding lajiao 99% of these places do not give a s**t about what you say. A week ago I told the lady (in Chinese) "do not add spicy peppers, none of any type, when I eat spicy food I get a stomach ache". ok ok ok. My food comes to me and is all red and oily. I ask her "zhege la bu la?" Is this spicy? What does she say? "bu tai la? (not very spicy)" what f'ing part of NOT SPICY, NO RED PEPPERS OR HUA JIAO did this cro-magon not understand? I tried a bite, paid and left the unfinished food and will never go back to yet another local eatery.

c) The street food was stand after stand of spicy doufu, undercooked spicy potatoes or tiny little chicken wings with barely one bite of food per wing. Every now and then the monotony was broken by an erkuai vendor or BBQ stand.

D) All the oil is dark and smelly. All of it, 100%, is gutter oil. There was nothing special anywhere. Nothing unique. Just a bunch of doufu and potatoes cooked in gutter oil and covered in red pepper and hua jiao. One lady used to make potatoes the way I liked but after a couple months her white potatoes were coming out of the fryer all brown and greasy and the oil was full of hua jiao now and I hate that crap. Huao jiao is that numbing spicy pepper and it is a stupid food ingredient. Only a goofball would like that stuff. So I can't go to her any longer. I have to wonder up and down the streets again looking at all the potato stands knowing the cook can't even manage cooking up greasy potatoes in a way I can stomach.

And in closing I am not going anywhere because all those people who say they are happy I do not believe them. Like the teacher at the Christmas buffet, she acted happy but I know her and she is more miserable than I am. Maybe some of us are not rich enough to buy all the foreign foods we want at Ripoff Paul's or wherever. Maybe some of us have still retain our good taste in food and can't just eat spicy rice noodles and call it a delicacy. I have students who say they can never work or live in Shanghai or Beijing because the rice noodles are not good there. I am sick of rice noodles. Rice noodles suck! Some students a few weeks back insisted on buying myself and another teacher lunch (which I paid for, I do not like students paying for em then wanting their pound of flesh later). "Oh we know a place with very flavor food!" Yea, the first dish out was a plate of spicy chicken feet. The kid seemed stunned we did not eat it. Later came the "flavor foods" of spicy potatoes and noodles. WOW! I told him I did not like it. I told the kid I wanted to order my own food. Was I rude? Maybe, but no ruder than he was when a teacher at an English corner offered him some homemade cookies and he rudely said "no, I don't like them". He did even try them, but he knew he would like them because they were not one of the same three or four things he eats every single meal of his life.

So last night I went to McDonalds and had a Big Mac. Best damned meal I have had in weeks. That burger was better than any burger on wen hua xiang or wenling jie or on biji lu or wherever. The worst burger in America is the best in Kunming!

Haha bravo! This is your piece de resistance, your chef d'oeuvres!

I think dai food is ok, at least they have their own style of cooking, also their special ingredients. Compared to Sichuan chongqing(crazy spicy with tons of oil, and crazy prickly ash),yunnan dish is not that spicy(sour with tons of oil). I can't understand every kunmingnese say how decilious the rice noodle is!!! And eat it three times a day! That is crazy! It's not even can be called "food", Call it "local snack" will be more appropiate. I threw it up once I had it, then I never try it.

Hey BillDan, I'm not suggesting that your criticisms and rants are without validity. However, I would like to point out that it is possible to make some western-style meals for yourself at home without shelling out exorbitant prices for imported ingredients. For instance, roast chicken and potatoes. Cheap and simple to make. I understand you have cravings for honey-glazed ham sometimes and it's expensive and hard to find, but it's probably not something you should be eating too often anyway for a couple of reasons: 1) processed meat is not the healthiest and 2) eating too much imported food is not environmentally kosher.

:—)

ouuuuu, good writers here. Tried the 翠府 near green lake with my beautiful chinese friend, food is just so so so. What do the kunmingnese eat everyday?

Crazy Laowai, you might look for the different kinds of stir-fried insects. Bee grub and bamboo worms are crunchy, perhaps like cheese doodles but healthier. I had dragonfly larvae, dipped in hot oil, then served. Not bad at all — they had a delicate flavor that I can' t describe.

Probably these are more common in Dai restaurants, but found elsewhere, too.

What I don't understand are some of the exorbitant prices they charge for western or any other imported food in Kunming. It's almost as if retailers are reluctant to sell international food, but have to, because in an international economy you can't just sell your products and not buy anything yourself (or at least something like that). For example, Kambly cookies from Switzerland cost an exorbitant 85 Yuan at Nanpingje, which is like $13 and probably about the most expensive in the world. By comparison, the same cookies cost about 99 Baht or just over $3 in Bangkok and about 60,000 dong or $3 in Ho Chi Minh City. Exactly how that extra $10 price tag is justified I don't know.

If you look around, there is a decent variety of international food or just plain old imported food (i.e. milk from Australia, New Zealand or Germany) which tastes better and is not tainted like some local milk has been. Sure, it's about 15-18 Yuan per 1L bottle, or about $2-2.50, which gets you at least 2L of milk back home, but it's either that or potentially dangerous and just plain disgusting tasting Chinese milk, which I can't drink because of it's awful aftertaste.

Once you round up your breakfast cereals, curry pastes, cookies, Thai rice (the local rice is inedible) or occassionally Indian or Pakistani Basmati rice, cheeses etc. that leaves local and imported fruits and vegetables, which are actually very cheap in most cases (well the local fruit and veg anyway). I usually go for chicken or fish as my choice of meats since Yunnan beef tastes pretty weird. All in all, it can get a bit pricey but like many locals, due to my discerning palate you have to spend in order to buy decent food. Sure, it always ends up being around $50 every time I go shopping, but I just imagine I'm in Bangkok or Sydney or LA and then I forget just how much I really spent.

@smiletome, I believe they tend to eat either lajiao coated kaorou or barbecued meats, mixian or spicy rice noodles (which we now know that BillDan is not very fond of) then again, neither am I though I am able to eat them occassionally as a light lunch or snack, or guoqiaomian or cross the bridge noodles, which can be surprisingly good. However, do try to only frequent brothers jiang or a similar chain as they presumably employ higher hygiene standards than local eateries (and since you are cooking your own ingredients in broth you don't have to worry about re-used oil).

Although they do become a bit boring after a while (and not healthy either if eaten too often), but undoubtedly western fast food chains such as McDonald's and KFC, as well as sit down pizza restaurants such as Pizza Hut and Papa John's surely employ international hygiene and food safety standards. You can't go wrong eating occassionally at these places. Or you could always shell out like $10 for a ham and cheese croissant from Starbucks. I didn't mention Burger King or a host of other international chains as I don't think you'll find them in Kunming (at least I haven't seen any) though Burger King has some outlets in Shanghai and Guangzhou (and probably Beijing too, though I haven't been to Beijing so I don't know).