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.
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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.
Farmers protest land grab south of Kunming
发布者120.000 yuan? That's insanely low for such an area. Are you sure of the numbers?
Beijing green-lights Nu River dam
发布者Sad.
Fracking comes to Southwest China
发布者3 to 5 years to set up rules, regulations and laws on shale gas extraction?! And here I thought that one of the pros of having a government like China's (cough, cough, haaaark, spit!) was that the decision-making process was speedy when needed.
And yes, we all know TallAm has a point unfortunately. Increased consumption pared with limited fossil fuel reserves make it inevitable that every single extractable deposit will be done with eventually, and as time passes, fewer and fewer environmental concerns will be addressed.
Lugu Lake airport slated for 2013
发布者Crossing my fingers they never get it finished.
Kunming new home sales plunge
发布者Wonder how they'll cope with the millions of migrant construction workers in a year or two when constructions grinds down to a 10th of what it is now. Seems like President Jin will be juggling several hot potatoes soon. I'll be looking for an apartment next year, so naturally I wouldn't mind a 15-20 percent drop in real estate prices personally, although I doubt it will be that much. The Chinese characteristics of this particular area of economics tell me no one wants to even consider selling with a loss unless the bank is there, knocking at your door, and the Chinese generally have a significantly smaller percentage of the RE value mortgaged than we on average have in the West due to savings and/or family loans before coughing up with the deposit.
Come to think of it, predicting what's going to happen in China it's a bit like putting on a blindfold, aim, and hope the dart ends up somewhere in the general direction of the board.