Forums > Living in Kunming > Cycling in Kunming Actually, I'm riding a pretty expensive bike that I more than often leave outside for over a year (locked, yes, but not necessarily always to something). My lock is *very* good though (comes with a warranty: if it breaks I get 500 euro from Abus). I don't know whether it's the luck, the lock or the scratches on my frame, but no one ever seems to have made an attempt at stealing it.
I think shiny frames and shitty locks are a bigger reason for bike theft. I will of course change my mind if mine gets stolen.
Forums > Living in Kunming > "Lazy" English teachers? And of course to get drunk on cocktails at expensive places like Salvador's, and eat Western food. Seriously, don't pretend as if all teachers are such poor creatures fighting the machine. Most of them are here on an adventure and if they bothered to do the effort (which most do, don't get me wrong), they can easily find the good deals too.
That said if you make the same salary here as in Europe, you are bloody well off. If they're not happy with the different life standard, if everything should be easy and fair, there's always Europe to work in. My god, such nagging.
Enough discussion now, we're obviously not going to agree.
Forums > Living in Kunming > "Lazy" English teachers? Not if I were a teacher. I have a different job but if I were working for Yunnanese employers, I would be happy with 1500 EUR a month, since after food, rent and excessive drinking I would still be saving over 1000 EUR per month. That's more than any of my friends in Belgium can say.
Forums > Living in Kunming > "Lazy" English teachers? As for the pay, you live in a place where qualified university students work office jobs for fat companies 6 days a week, 10 hours a day for as little as 5000 RMB a month. Kunming is very affordable so 100-120 per hour is actually a very good wage, making you 2600-3120 per week = up to 12480 RMB a month. That's 1560 EUR a month. You know what a beginning foreign-language teacher makes in a country where rent is four times as high as Kuming's? Right: 1500 EUR. Reference: Belgium.
Forums > Living in Kunming > "Lazy" English teachers? The times that media were absolutely non-sensational have died with consumerism.
Besides, I don't agree with you. It's just true what they write. Even before reading this article, I had the impression that the majority of the people teaching English here are one or more of the following:
* not native
* not qualified
* not even suited
* working illegally on a student visa
Some of the native speakers' spelling is simply bad. Yet they teach.
The only ones to be trusted without testing or quizzing are the ones that have pocketed a TEFL diploma. Such people need not fear since they can rebuke any sneers by fishing out their diplomas.
Everyone else needs to be screened thoroughly. But as often in China (and elsewhere), schools only care about money, parents only want to spend as little as possible, so you get a layer of rotten teachers. It'll take time to root them out.
Wild mushroom season arrives with a friendly warning
发布者The World Agroforestry Centre's East and Central Asia office has published a book "Mushrooms for Trees and People", subtitled "A field guide to useful mushrooms of the Mekong region". It describes the use and edibility of many mushroom species in Yunnan and can be downloaded for free through us (humidtropics.cgiar.org/[...]
A book review was done by Gokunming in 2014:
www.gokunming.com/[...]
National park system in the works for China
发布者巫家壩 is much more likely to be translated as the basin on the land of the Wu family, cfr. 石家莊 (not the house of a family of stones),張家口 (not a stretched house estuary).
That said, I recently walked the old silk road from the Nu river (Baihualing 百花嶺) to Tengchong. This is also a protected national park and the trail is well-marked in English and Chinese, and has many litter bins along the way. There's room for improvement, but it beats anything I've walked so far.
Report: Chinese cities falling far short of air pollution standards
发布者Beware that the author is probably using the Chinese AQI. It being an index, it is a relatively arbitrary figure compared to the absolute value of PM2.5 particles in microgrammes per cubic metre!
The American AQI standard would rate the concentrations with a much higher index score (also implying much higher health risks)!
Province nervously monitoring forest fire season
发布者they also release a chemical in the soil, killing competing plants. In combination with their water-sucking properties, this leads to even more aridity.
What does one do when one spots a forest fire? I saw several starting on my road trip near Lijiang in February, but saw no police station to report it to. Whom do I call?
Urban managers throw block party, no one attends
发布者tits! You had me until I read the comments