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.

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/[...]