Technically you can get married in China without registering your marriage at your embassy / consulate but it means that your own country will NOT consider you married. So better do the registry part, which is the most complex part.
Chinese side of the marriage procedure is fairly straight forward:
The chinese spouse need her ID and Hukou while the foreigner need passport and a legalized translation of the "being single" certificat. The administrative marriage is to be done in the capital of the province where the Chinese spouse has her/his hukou, at the main provincial office for marriage. It is NOT the chinese that requires the health certificat, it has been dropped at national level a few years back, but some embassies still have this requirement. The administrative marriage can be done in a few hours when you have all the paper ready.
Foreigner side.
It is the foreigner side that can slow down the process. You NEED to start the foreigner side before the chinese. What you need depends of your own country requirement to register the marriage officially.
There is only one thing to do, find your nearest consulate and ask them what you need to do. As an example my country (France) interview the bride-to-be as a prerequisite of the "certificate of marriage capacity" which I find is a shocking intrusion in and limitation of my freedom (to marry who I want).
Some embassies / consulate will make the process easy while other will drag it on for ages. If your embassy is easy going and your chinese spouse's hukou is not at the other end of the country the process can be done in 2/3 months. If your embassy is being difficult about it, it can take 6, 9 or even 12 months to do the process.
So really the question is, where are you from Ocean and where is your Chinese Fiance's hukou.
On a practical note, after the marriage you can apply for a "visiting relative" visa in Kunming. You should be able to have a visa allowing you to stay a year in china and be multiple entries (ask for it). Fee depends of your country of origin but expect something similar to your student visa fees.
We sell chinese chess/go board at the game cafe (136 wenlin jie, opposite Prague). We also sell chinese chess pieces and smallish size international chess (ancient chinese warriors pieces). Come have a look, we're pretty reasonable on the price.
I have to disagree with Laotou statement that China is very multicultural. I am european and lived in London for several years, where something close to 40% of the population is not british born. Kunming is NOT that kind of environment. Han Chinese have the impression of multiculturalism in Yunnan because of the minorities (40% of the population) but for an outsider who don't speak Chinese that multiculturalism might be somehow diluted, especially in Kunming. Outside of Kunming the particularism of ethnic groups might be more striking and have less of a simple dress-up aspect.
Foreigners living in Kunming are mostly from Asia, Korean and Thai are a big chunk of them. The community of Western foreigners is a patchwork based on language, so it is actually a small group of communities that don't work as well together than in other more multicultural places like Hong Kong. Those western communities are also far less important to the locals in term of trade than they generally think. Symbolically Westerners are important to chinese, but more as a reverse orientalism than a need for real interactions.
English is useless in daily life in kunming, a lot of shop keepers are very poor people who never had the time for education and are just scraping a living. However with a minimal effort and language exchange you will pick up a 100-200 words that will allow you to go through daily life without too much frustrating experiences, as I do.
Only university students can speak a bit of english and none of them works in shops. But a lot of them will be happy to have social interaction with you, but you have to at least pretend that you are trying to learn chinese. Most Chinese i meet don't understand and take it as an insult to their culture when someone do not make a real effort to learn the language. They are also fairly unaware of the difficulty of learning their language, they notice the few westerners that are successful at it and forget the hundreds that are never going beyond intermediate level. Over time this can be a serious source of frustration. But 2-3 years is not such a long time, and as an outside observer Kunming can be pretty interesting and also offer a base of exploration that is fantastic.
I have made the trip more than 10 times, although not in the last 6 months.
The best way to do the crossing in my experience in both direction is the new direct bus between Shz airport and Kowloon Station that use the new Western corridor. It cost 100rmb, takes usually 1h30 (including border passage), requires you to get off the bus only once, to pass the new (and empty) border crossing of the western corridor. It is super smooth and bring you to kowloon, where you can get to the airport or the rest of HK in no time. All other ways of crossing requires you to move your luggage more.
The bus company have a little stand in the arrival hall in Shenzhen and a check-in hall under the "elemental" shopping mall of kowloon station. Their logo is kind of pink with some kind of dragons but i can't remember their names.
Little piece of information: many landlords are not left out of the handover fees. A comon practice is to have a relative posing as the owner of the biz going out and pocketing the handover fees (after kicking the current biz out of it without any kind of compensation).
Handover fees have been going up drastically, but at least the biz that was moving in had a chance of recovering it and getting compensation for renovation cost when they were moving out. Many of the premises in wenlin jie area were dump before a bar renovate them and did something nice out of it. Any kind of renovation cost at least 200-300,000 rmb, so how are new biz suppose to do? Recover that investment in 1 year, ridiculous!
Starbucks integrating Yunnan coffee in its global supply chain is probably a very good thing for the Yunnan economy. It will raise the profile of the yunnan coffee and will also probably significantly increase directly the sale volume.
However at a personal level I would be dismay to see one open in Wenlin jie / Wen hua xiang. Starbucks have financial capacity that make the competition with local bar/cafe totally unfair.
Why is it a big advantage to have some much cash reserve? They can buy their shop, when most cafe owner just don't have the cash for that. If you own your shop you are not at the mercy of a landlord raising your rent by 50% and thus making your biz not sustainable. It also mean that you can afford to spend more in renovation and decoration because you know that you have 10 years to recover those costs, instead of the 6 years most local cafe have to count on (after one renewal, when biz is finally starting to be good, the rent can go crazy). Owning their shop also mean that after a few year Starbucks operational costs will raise only moderately (rent is a big chunk of operational cost) when local cafe will see their costs rise due to rent pressure. Owning a shop also mean that Starbucks will have far lower operational costs than most local cafe, making it way more profitable. Why lower costs, because instead of paying a rent they make an initial investment that they totally recover (possibly make another profit on) when they close business and sell the place.
Local cafe are mostly run by passionate people who love what they are doing and are not globalized corporation with huge cash flow. So it is sad to see cities losing their local cafe scene to Starbucks and the transformation of local area into "mall streets". I am not an anti-Starbucks guy, they brought a cafe scene in many places that did not have one to start with, but Kunming has already a cafe scene which creates unique cross cultural interaction and has grown to be an important element of Kunming culture.
It's greatly up to us, as customers, to support the local cafe scene by choosing them over Starbucks, if it comes to that.
Higher divorce rate is a common trend in societies that move away from farming based economy towards industry and services economy. Disturbingly enough, it is often described as a loss of moral standard attributed to some social disfunction widely known, for china the one child policy.
Sociologist, or your own careful observation, shows that it has more to do with the fact that women gain access to some level of financial autonomy, allowing them to break free (at least partially) from some of the most social pressure to conform to the established order. In short with their own job (even crappy ones) they can choose to conform or get away form the role of good compliant housewife.
My personal observation is also that Chinese men tends to have an attitude that will only accelerate this trend, as a lot of them have trouble breaking with tradition, especially telling their parents that "no she is not there to serve you".
Lastly, marriage in China induce a wagon of commitment and expectation from the family. It is easy to say i will support you when you get married but the harsh reality of what it actually means financially can be a serious strain for a marriage (try to buy a house for yourself and both set of parents before your 30 in today's China!). A strain not helped if the lady has some high expectation for her lifestyle.
I love their mix of retro and futuristic, go check their website (www.shxpir.com/), its full of more good photos. Also check "the edge" website (edge.neocha.com/tag/shxpir/), it has funny narrative about some picture. A few photos there have a fairly homo-erotic feel and remind me of the work done by Pierre & Gilles.
This is not really the kind of image I associate with China, even its art scene. I also find refreshing the surrealist taste of their image. I think it has a diffuse feel of derision, mocking the current obsession with modernity and beauty.
Gao Xingjian / 高行健 received the nobel prize of literature in 2000. The press release for the prize refers notably to "soul Mountain". Gao Xingkian was a recognized artist in Beijing in the 80's. However his work has been banned in China for many years and he is a French citizen since 1997 or 99 (depending on which bio you read). While in China he translated several major author in Chinese and while in France he has written several plays in French.
Actually there is nothing Bizarre. French Tarot is NOT the thing english speakers know as Tarot. French Tarot is a very popular card game in France, nothing esoteric about it.
So English speakers play a popular english game while French speakers play a popular french game :)
The Box says goodbye
发布者Little piece of information: many landlords are not left out of the handover fees. A comon practice is to have a relative posing as the owner of the biz going out and pocketing the handover fees (after kicking the current biz out of it without any kind of compensation).
Handover fees have been going up drastically, but at least the biz that was moving in had a chance of recovering it and getting compensation for renovation cost when they were moving out. Many of the premises in wenlin jie area were dump before a bar renovate them and did something nice out of it. Any kind of renovation cost at least 200-300,000 rmb, so how are new biz suppose to do? Recover that investment in 1 year, ridiculous!
Starbucks moving into Yunnan to support China expansion
发布者Starbucks integrating Yunnan coffee in its global supply chain is probably a very good thing for the Yunnan economy. It will raise the profile of the yunnan coffee and will also probably significantly increase directly the sale volume.
However at a personal level I would be dismay to see one open in Wenlin jie / Wen hua xiang. Starbucks have financial capacity that make the competition with local bar/cafe totally unfair.
Why is it a big advantage to have some much cash reserve? They can buy their shop, when most cafe owner just don't have the cash for that. If you own your shop you are not at the mercy of a landlord raising your rent by 50% and thus making your biz not sustainable. It also mean that you can afford to spend more in renovation and decoration because you know that you have 10 years to recover those costs, instead of the 6 years most local cafe have to count on (after one renewal, when biz is finally starting to be good, the rent can go crazy). Owning their shop also mean that after a few year Starbucks operational costs will raise only moderately (rent is a big chunk of operational cost) when local cafe will see their costs rise due to rent pressure. Owning a shop also mean that Starbucks will have far lower operational costs than most local cafe, making it way more profitable. Why lower costs, because instead of paying a rent they make an initial investment that they totally recover (possibly make another profit on) when they close business and sell the place.
Local cafe are mostly run by passionate people who love what they are doing and are not globalized corporation with huge cash flow. So it is sad to see cities losing their local cafe scene to Starbucks and the transformation of local area into "mall streets". I am not an anti-Starbucks guy, they brought a cafe scene in many places that did not have one to start with, but Kunming has already a cafe scene which creates unique cross cultural interaction and has grown to be an important element of Kunming culture.
It's greatly up to us, as customers, to support the local cafe scene by choosing them over Starbucks, if it comes to that.
Divorce rates rising among young couples in Kunming
发布者Higher divorce rate is a common trend in societies that move away from farming based economy towards industry and services economy. Disturbingly enough, it is often described as a loss of moral standard attributed to some social disfunction widely known, for china the one child policy.
Sociologist, or your own careful observation, shows that it has more to do with the fact that women gain access to some level of financial autonomy, allowing them to break free (at least partially) from some of the most social pressure to conform to the established order. In short with their own job (even crappy ones) they can choose to conform or get away form the role of good compliant housewife.
My personal observation is also that Chinese men tends to have an attitude that will only accelerate this trend, as a lot of them have trouble breaking with tradition, especially telling their parents that "no she is not there to serve you".
Lastly, marriage in China induce a wagon of commitment and expectation from the family. It is easy to say i will support you when you get married but the harsh reality of what it actually means financially can be a serious strain for a marriage (try to buy a house for yourself and both set of parents before your 30 in today's China!). A strain not helped if the lady has some high expectation for her lifestyle.
Interview: Shxpir
发布者I love their mix of retro and futuristic, go check their website (www.shxpir.com/), its full of more good photos. Also check "the edge" website (edge.neocha.com/tag/shxpir/), it has funny narrative about some picture. A few photos there have a fairly homo-erotic feel and remind me of the work done by Pierre & Gilles.
This is not really the kind of image I associate with China, even its art scene. I also find refreshing the surrealist taste of their image. I think it has a diffuse feel of derision, mocking the current obsession with modernity and beauty.
China blogs: annoying commercials, Jackie Chan gaffes, and more
发布者Chinese Literature Prize
Gao Xingjian / 高行健 received the nobel prize of literature in 2000. The press release for the prize refers notably to "soul Mountain". Gao Xingkian was a recognized artist in Beijing in the 80's. However his work has been banned in China for many years and he is a French citizen since 1997 or 99 (depending on which bio you read). While in China he translated several major author in Chinese and while in France he has written several plays in French.
Nobel prize link:
nobelprize.org/[...]