Lindt is probably nothing special. Also if you check on Taobao you'll see hundreds of shops selling it. And I disagree with Bubbles: Chocolate is a winner, especially if you can find the handmade artisan stuff. My wife's sister and aunts practically begged me to bring as much along as I could carry last time I went home. Remember (as you know) that Chinese chocolate doesn't even begin to compare to the real stuff.
I don't know any foreigners who'd have to live on such little money, although I do remember my first year in China, near the end of the month I had to be real careful with the pesos. It was definitely not cool to have 3 days left to pay day and all I had in my wallet was 50 kuai.
Now I probably could get by on 15 yuan if I tried, but as Tigertiger said: Why would you? Our current food budget is 3-4000 a month but that includes many visits at the better restaurants and western food.
Those kinds of details. I figured you might have adopted a kiddo :) Might just go for some bilingual training. Speak English to him all the time, teach him the important verbs, nouns and relevant sentences in English. Our toddler is 1.5 years old and me and my wife speak two different language to him,, they're like sponges at that age, and it's actually fairly easy for them.
Details?
I send smaller files over Skype, but with the GFW and the general standard of net speed here, an 800 MB file would probably take 3-4 days.
No results found.
The comment from Chris had deserved a wider audience. Beluga?
Went there yesterday and it totally made my week. Nice decor and friendly staff and a real salad bar. Sadly we both wanted mexican food so I can't really say much about their other courses. The food was great but just a tad spicier would have improved the dish. The best thing was that we almost had the place to ourselves and we could have a quiet conversation without shouting, spitting Chinese people in the background. I realised how much I had missed that since coming here.
We went to Chicago Coffee a couple of days ago and it was a nice experience. The place is cozy with soft comfy chairs (I realized how much I have missed one since coming here) and they have a nice little collection of English language books in the corner consisting mainly of classics and travel litterature. I was looking forward to trying their advertized tortilla bar but it wasn't up and running that evening.
Instead we went for 2 12 inch pizzas -roast chicken and pepperoni- but we quickly realized that 1 would have been enough. Those things are heavy. I am mainly into Italian style pizza but Chicago's double layered pizzas are well worth a try. Their coffee seems to be a bit on the expensive side but people say good things about it and they have got a nice selection. I wouldn't mind dropping by again some day,, hopefully when they've got the tortilla thing going. English speaking staff btw.
Yunnan news roundup
发布者I assume this test only involved a very limited amount of traffic since the North-South traffic in Kunming today was worse than imaginable. Cool that the IMAX is ready to go. They are awesome.
Yunnan news roundup
发布者260 yuan?! Ridiculous.
I've had a phone stolen in 61 myself. Kinda had me reconsider my previous stand on people beating up thieves. I don't know how to spot all the kinds of thieves but I am getting better at it. The more pro kind usually work in pairs. They are probably somewhere between 18 and 25 yo and never wear a bag. They usually try to blend in with darkish casual clothes. Be aware if you see two guys waiting for the bus who clearly know eachother but when they enter one goes to the back and the other stays at the front.
I'd love to see you punch one of those guys if you detect them but the Chinese say that most of them carry knives so it might be better to play it cool. Anyway you never know if the thief has a partner in the bus who is prepared to help him (the main reason he is there is to create confusion and loudly vouch for a detected partner in crime - just enough to have time for the bus to reach the next stop).
Another kind my gf has encountered a couple of times is the single elderly man or woman with one arm covered by a jacket. They'll move close to you and try to fish something out of your bag or pockets with the hidden hand, pretending to have bumped into you by mistake if discovered.
Kunming's chengguan suffering image problems
发布者Although the way the chengguan are going about their business can sometimes be questionable they actually have important work to do. Who are we to say that there should be no regulations for streetvendors and snacksellers and no reinforcement of the law? There are hundreds -if not thousands- of streets in Kunming designated for late night street food but one of the problems is that the popular streets get filled up completely and no cars (and hence no emergency vehicles) can pass. That's not even mentioning the "quality" of the food that the amount of competition just keeps lowering.
We all know that a law not enforced here in China is no law at all so lets get a more qualified and well trained cheng guan to get things rolling.
Hu visits Yunnan stressing importance of ethnic unity
发布者"While in Yao'an, Hu inspected rubble from this month's earthquake. Hu agreed that it was in fact rubble thereby ending a week long standoff between rubble supporters and rubble deniers in the area."
Kunming warily hosting postponed academic conference
发布者They have recently tightened up the rules for in which hotels foreigners can stay as well. I actually ran into a psb officer at one of the hotels I tried to book at. He said the tightening of procedures were to protect us mentioning Xinjiang and Uighurs and stuff like that.