Ma Li at Wheatfield Bookstore (www.gokunming.com/[...] around the corner from the Yunda west gate has a limited but interesting selection. Last time I was there I saw a copy of Bitches Brew by Miles Davis.... definitely worth a look, Ma Li might also know some other places in town to pick up vinyl, but I'm guessing it's gonna be revolutionary songs or stuff that was coming out of Shanghai in the 1920s-30s.

@Tom/jivebunny: Thanks for the kind words, glad to have been helpful.

@Tom: Best of luck with your new endeavors, see you at the Hump later.

Taobao City's address is 448 Baiyun Lu, it's about 150 meters east of Beijing Lu and just west of the intersection of Baiyun Lu and Wanhong Lu (万宏路) on the north side of the street.

For the record, this is not a website for foreigners, it is a website for English speakers living in or visiting Kunming/Yunnan. Originally, I started it in 2005 so I could have a quick online reference for good places around Kunming because I would often order ahead before leaving home for my favorite neighborhood restaurants.

The original version of GoKunming was actually bilingual. When we became a two-man operation (and a real, living, breathing website) in 2006, we decided to just make an English site because it was simply too much work for two non-native Chinese speakers to update and maintain the site in two languages.

The majority of GoKunming users may be foreigners, but I am just as happy for Chinese people to use the site to find people to rent their apartments as I am for a foreigner to find a cheap used refrigerator.

With the rate that people are learning English here, I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years there were more Chinese users of GoKunming than foreign users, which would be fine. I'm just happy that people find it useful.

I think most people, even the hippie douchebags, are going to be receptive to new people as long as the interaction feels like a two-way street rather than just one person taking as much info as they can from the other.

If someone's hanging with friends and trying to unwind with a beer after a long day of work, the last thing they want to do is answer a million questions from a person they've never met and may never see again.

If you're going to ask a stranger for help, I feel like it's far more fair to the person whose downtime you're interrupting if you offer to buy them a beer or a coffee, anything to let the other person know you're not just a "taker". Even if they don't take you up on the offer, they're likely to appreciate it and open up more than they normally would.

As Chingis mentions, a lot of information already exists in the forums on this site... poking around different threads is likely to answer many of your basic questions. I'd also suggest trying to check out different events around town, which will give you an idea of what kinds of people hang out at which places.