User profile: Alien

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Looking for childfreindly activities

Lots of kids everywhere.

Often a few Chinese, non-Chinese & part Chinese kids at the DT Bar courtyard on Sunday afternoons after about 3:30, but they're mostly ages about 4-8. They run around and seem to be having a good time.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Thanksgiving

@tiger: I take your point - Edward Bernays and his 1929 book PROPAGANDA - Goebbels liked it, and in the US it gave rise to the brainwarp albatross of modern commercial advertising, as well as PR, more sophisticated media manipulation, state & political propaganda, etc.

Japan & KFC does strike me as a bit sad.
Anyway, I ate well last night. Don't know if "the USA needs our support more than ever," but I didn't feel we were either supporting or not supporting anything, except a good group foody occasion, without flags, that has become an American tradition. The beer was German, the tequila Mexican.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Thanksgiving

@tiger: yes, but Thanksgiving is a family eating affair combined with a Thanks, God thing. China has plenty of excuses for family eating already (best example obviously Spring Festival), and not so much interest in thanking God for it. Halloween, on the other hand, is a riot of play that involves various evil beings, etc.; Chinese religion has plenty of beings, evil & otherwise; easy to see how all this appeals to the relatively young.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Thanksgiving

@redjon: It's not an international festival, just the American (and also Canadian) version of a harvest festival, seen in Christian religious terms thanks to the culture of the early Anglo Protestant colonizers of the northeast of what is now the US (not sure how Quebecois Catholics see the Canadian version). Has taken on a nationalist aura in the US. The Chinese harvest festival has already passed and is not seen as a nationalist thing. In both North America and China, a harvest festival is, unsurprisingly, mostly about family and cultural traditions, not political ones.

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And it was all good. Congratulations & best wishes always!

Yeah, a few more articles like this one, which connect real people in the foreign community with real Chinese people (despite occasional cultural unfamiliarities), rather than the simple recounting of relationships involving stereotypical misunderstandings on both sides that often appear in the forums.

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I'm sorry but I don't find any improvement with the new format - I don't mean it's any worse, just that this kind of shifting of things around is more trouble than it's worth, both for the website folks & for the users. Add concrete content, okay; but don't bother with the appearances thing.

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Good idea, hope people will contribute whatever they can - imagine being sent to school & not being able to afford glasses to see the blackboard! Elementary education may be free in China but there are seemingly minor expenses that prevent many poor in the countryside from taking full advantage of them - not exactly a level playing field.

Reviews

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Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.

As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.

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Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.

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Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.