@vexed, wrong, you don't need a Chinese person, I've done it myself through my own Bank of China account.

The only reason you might want a local to accompany you is if you don't speak enough Chinese to make your needs understood by the staff.

Basically there is a limit of USD 500 or equivalent that can be converted per day from Yuan into foreign currency - this limit applies to all persons irrespective of nationality and is a Chinese government law designed to reduce the possibility of capital flight. If you need to send more than that, you'll have to come in every day to convert more currency into your desired foreign currency prior to making a telegraphic transfer (also known as a wire transfer) request, which costs around 200 Yuan (which is almost twice as expensive than sending money from Europe or Australia to China or any other country for example). I believe that if you send money first to Hong Kong and then from there to another country the USD 500 per day limit does not apply, but in order to do that, you'd need a bank account or broker based in Hong Kong to help you, which makes little sense unless you are making regular transfers of large amounts.

So, in order to send say USD 2,000 from mainland China to the USA you'll need to come into the Bank of China 4 times (on 4 different days) and convert the money into USD, USD 500 at a time, which will be in the form of a USD account since it is still not possible to send RMB out of China electronically (though it is possible to wire RMB into China).

On the 4th day, you make a wire transfer request and the RMB 200 fee will be deducted from your account. The funds should be available in your US account within 1-2 business days.

I'm assuming this "Dai" hole-in-the-wall place on Jianshe Lu is the same one that I've been to, which is popular with Thai, Lao and even western university students studying in Kunming. I went with a friend from Europe and 2 Thai friends back in March I think it was, who told me the food was actually Thai, not Dai.

Since I know Thailand and it's food very well, in my opinion the food was closer to Thai too, rather than Dai, even if it wasn't that authentic but close enough for me. Also, this restaurant's food was definately much less similar to the Dai food you get in various restaurants around the Yunnan University area.

Of course the place had no atmosphere, but the food was surprisingly good despite the questionable food safety standards. Still, I didn't get sick which is a good thing!

Hmm..everyone seems to have similar sort of experiences and I'm in the same boat.

Speaking of the "hellos" they have become proportionally less in the past year compared even to 2009 when I first travelled to Kunming or 2010 when I first stayed long term. I have also noticed a vast increase in the number of foreigners coming to and residing in Kunming since 2011.

I have noticed that walking down a street in Kunming, most people neither care about foreigners, nor stare. Only a small minority of people even say "helloooo", which would be considered a very boring and lame joke in the west, even if we reversed it to Chinese and made it "nihaoooo" it still wouldn't be considered funny in our sarcastic western societies. Still, I haven't experienced a "hello" since last year and it generally comes from small children these days or occassionally from groups of teenagers or university students, never people older than about 25 or 30.

Anyway, I agree with the commentors about travelling in other rural parts of SE Asia and even in parts of China where there are lots of non-Han minorities - the stares are either very rare, subtle or even largely non-existant. I have spent many years travelling throughout every country in SE Asia multiple times including rural areas. Irrespective of the mode of travel (car, bus, train, plane, minivan etc.) and whether I'm in the countryside or not, few locals are interested in my presence and the vast majority are used to seeing foreigners even if they're not that common in a particular area.

For some reason Han Chinese in mainland China however still act quite weird in the presence of foreigners...must be a cultural thing, because as I said in every other country in the region, even Myanmar, which has fewer foreigners than Yunnan the reaction is usually very subtle or non-existant.

Sure, and those people you refer to are usually desperate, poverty stricken Vietnamese villagers looking to make more money in China, but they usually get sent back rather quickly once caught.

Still, since the penalties for illegally crossing a border and illegally working in China are quite severe compared to other countries, I don't think that many people try the above; it's usually in SE Asia where it's a big problem - i.e. Myanmar nationals working illegally in Thailand but then eventually being allowed to stay in some cases.

When it comes to overtaying visas and/or working on tourist visas, this is a common practice whereby the person involved does not seek to obtain a proper work visa for whatever reason. The same thing happens in SE Asia, particularly Thailand where huge numbers of foreigners (mostly westerners) were abusing the visa system by living in the country on 30 day tourist "visas" and were working on these. The country started clamping down and restricting overland crossings to just 15 day stays for westerners, plus introducing a 90 day in 180 day rule for residing in Thailand on visa exemptions for all visa-exempt nationals.

Sounds like China is trying to do the same, and as long as it's possible to obtain a work visa for legally working and residing in China, then I don't see why some people still go down the illegal route.

@laotou, I think this topic has just about been done to death, so I won't go any further as it will just bring out more anger and frustration on our part as we could go on and on about racism in China but let me just clear up what I meant by "homogeneous":

This term means that the population of China is largely composed of one ethnic group (92% Han), and even the minority ethnic groups look largely indistinguishable to the majority, except for their dress. Therefore China is nothing like the USA, Australia etc. with their large minority groups all largely living together in harmony these days. This means that anyone who doesn't look like the majority is automatically labeled a "foreigner" in China, whereas a black person in the USA is just as likely to be a native as a white person is.

Regarding your Qing Dynasty, dongbei comparison etc. yes you are absolutely correct.

Anyway, I think I've said enough about this topic, but just like everyone else, maybe it's just to blow off a little steam since I don't get much opportunity to talk about these kinds of issues with the locals as they don't seem to understand what foreigners have to deal with here.