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Forums > Living in Kunming > Chinese driver's license

All information above might per 2013 be outdated.
You might have heard that by the first of January 2013 new traffic regulations come into effect. This means as well that per that date the examination system will be changed. The non Chinese examination (Read; in English) is not ready yet and it is unclear when that will be. This means that examinations will only be in Chinese for the time being.
This means that one still has till the end of this year, well Thursday 27 to do the theoretic examination (Foreigners can only do examinations on Thursdays).
I found out last Monday and did the Motorbike examination yesterday. I passed thus don't have to go for my last shot on the 27th. But it shows that id one is familiar with the material one can do it in a few days.
The examination as it is now means learning all the questions and answers (Even when they are wrong) and is thus more of a memory exercise than a real test to see if you understand the matter. 5 years ago I did the previous test and that was far worse and included having to memorise the whole Chinese traffic code. The examination has thus improved and it is hoped that the next one will be even better and more practical.

The address and phone are still the same but inform thus first if they already do examinations in English before you go there.

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > How To Apply For A China Driver's Licence

All information above might per 2013 be outdated.
You might have heard that by the first of January 2013 new traffic regulations come into effect. This means as well that per that date the examination system will be changed. The non Chinese examination (Read; in English) is not ready yet and it is unclear when that will be. This means that examinations will only be in Chinese for the time being.
This means that one still has till the end of this year, well Thursday 27 to do the theoretic examination (Foreigners can only do examinations on Thursdays).
I found out last Monday and did the Motorbike examination yesterday. I passed thus don't have to go for my last shot on the 27th. But it shows that id one is familiar with the material one can do it in a few days.
The examination as it is now means learning all the questions and answers (Even when they are wrong) and is thus more of a memory exercise than a real test to see if you understand the matter. 5 years ago I did the previous test and that was far worse and included having to memorise the whole Chinese traffic code. The examination has thus improved and it is hoped that the next one will be even better and more practical.

The address and phone are still the same but inform thus first if they already do examinations in English before you go there.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Computer Market?

Indeed Yuangtong North street. There where is connects with Yuanxi road is a big store that has all you can get including photographic equipment. The shops in 121 street are of a lower level of product quality and service.

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Yunnan Railway Museum

What you have been visiting is the rolling stock exhibition hall (annex to the museum) where some real trains and wagons are on display (Including a train from Burma) The actual museum has been closed for some time because of the construction of the new metro. (The museum is in the old North Railway station which is right on top of Beijing Lu).
I was told that a new museum might be opened in 2014.
While I was there the staff changed the sign with opening hours. Now they open one hour earlier at 09:00 in the morning. The museum stays open till 16:00.
The rolling stock exhibition hall is located west of the museum. (About 200 meters left along the railway line if you are coming from the city centre inside a living compound.)

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Is there still drought?

Sorry to see people with a very limited experience write comments on this forum. Yes there is plenty of water in Yunnan but mostly in rivers that just passes through. The higher places that are dependent on rainfall, and Kunming is part of that, lack water. Indeed some of it is due to bad planning and wastage but in general there has not been enough water for Kunming but especially for farmers that are dependent on it. When I travelled through the province just before the rain season I was shocked about how dry the countryside was and how low, even dry, the reservoirs are. Even natural lakes have much lower levels and wetlands are drying out. Not only that but the damage caused by wild fires has been enormous.
However; and I think that was the question, the water supply in Kunming is largely back to normal and even when it was restricted it was still manageable for house hold use by filling up some buckets during the supply period. Mind you, I was glad that I was not running a restaurant or something like that during the restricted period.
To put things in perspective. The Kunming water use is about 100 litres/person/day. The bare minimum is 5 litres/person/day (UNHCR Guidelines)
Anyway hardly anybody drinks the water (Also that is quite posible) and one commenly has 18 litres drinking water supplied for a few kuai at home nearly 24/7.

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Indeed tripling passengers to 120,000,000 is quite a lot and is more than the largest airport anywhere in the world at this moment. As a hub Kunming is not very suitable either at this moment because of the high fuel prices compared to airports nearer to refineries but when the oil pipeline from Myanmar comes up to steam this might change.

Part of the growth of passenger volumes could be explained by the trend that more and more people nowadays fly and instead of having one longer holiday there is a tendency for more frequent shorter holidays.
A relative working in outbound tourism here is quite busy with flights out of Changshui to tourist destinations which include now as well Sri Lanka. Apparently there are quite some charters now as well going to Siem Reap in Cambodia and Nepal. So part of the growth is not inbound tourism but outbound tourism.
The other trend I see now is that on major routes like Beijing and Shanghai wide body aircrafts are used instead of the single isles ones used before. These require some 3000 metres of runway so cannot land on any of the other airports here in Yunnan.
The Chinese airspace is congested but they are working on modernising the air route system.
Kunming itself might not have too much to offer but one of the largest tourist attractions in Yunnan, that is the Stone Forest, depends on Changshui airport.

Changshui already has two full size runways with a length of 4000 and 4500 metres thus can handle the largest airplanes in the world. Now Changshui is mainly handling single aisle planes (Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 types) which require at this altitude a runway of 2150 metres. So most likely they will add some shorter runways.

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