User profile: Alien

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Their back!

I'm usually happy about shaokao on the street - yeah, would be nice if they cleaned up afterwards, but...

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Forums > Living in Kunming > White Rabbit

Y'see, Peter, Gracie Slick and the Jefferson Airplane were secretly planting memes in American heads for a Chinese candy company back in the summer of 1967. Now the Americans are all crazy, especially those who couldn't understand the song - but in fact there are also some who have strong suspicions of the motives of Lewis Carroll - there's a line in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, delivered to Alice by some impossible creature that she meets, I think: "I'll believe in you if you'll believe in me."
That's how conspiracies start. I personally belong to several, and you're welcome to sign up on the basis of the above quotation.

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Passport waived at hostel. Good, bad or ugly?

Simplest to ignore the issue, it rarely if ever leads to any problems of note, at least for the traveler. The local person or hotel manager will be much more aware of possible problems than you will and will act accordingly and sensibly. Technically, I think you're right: legally you must be registered where you are staying, but I have successfully talked my way around such issues more than once. If you rent a flat, however, you will likely have a problem when you go to renew your visa, if you do not register at the local copshop.

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Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?

This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.

The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.

See John Israel's EXCELLENT book on the history of the university:

Israel, John. Lianda: A Chinese University in War and Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998

Books about universities do not normally strike me as exciting, but this one is.

John has lived in Kunming for several months per year over the past 10 years or more.

Modern nationalism is a manipulative ideology to manage global capital, and nationalist blindness to actual human beings leads to the punishment of innocents. China is not a communist country. People who murder in Pakistan cannot be extradited to China to be judged for murders of people in Pakistan, even if they're Chinese.

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.