User profile: Alien

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Disposable chopsticks bad for nature

...that is collectively owned by the cyclists and that refuse to deliver from restaurants that provide throw away chopsticks, and who will not use elevators.
Man, there's GENIUS on this thread today!

(Confession: I think I ate off paper plates last night at the highly-successful Have a Heart fundraiser. However, I walked home afterwards....but then I bought some bananas on the way home and as I had been too thoughtless to carry my own bag, I accepted the plastic bag into which the hawker put the bananas, and I already have way too many plastic bags in my flat...damn!)

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Disposable chopsticks bad for nature

@Dazzer: another good idea. But then of course you can stop having food delivered, so that the delivery vehicle is not out there burning petrocarbons, and walk to the nearest noodle shop that does not use throw away chopsticks (take the stairs, it's healthier and you don't waste electric power, run perhaps on coal or forest-destroying people-moving dam sites, in the elevator).
Very difficult to keep clean hands - opportunities for political correctness are inexhaustible, all good - there's no end to tactics of Resistance, although I do think some may be more effective than others.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Disposable chopsticks bad for nature

Misfit: Good point. But note also that the entire ideal of democracy rests on the idea that electrons count up too. 'One' is always outnumbered by 'many', and there is an obvious lesson to be learned from the fact. But electrons are useless unless they are informed - so thanks for the post, dolphin, for what it is worth, and for as far as it goes.
Methinks, however, that there is more to do and to consider, as everything is inextricably, and often irresponsibly, connected to everything else.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Hotel buffet in Kunming

(1) No.
(2) As you like.
(4) I seem to be buried in imperfections. Anyway, I rather distrust people who have nothing but principles and imagine life is just a matter of living up to them. People like that can be scary.
Guess I'll go to Hell, ho-hum.

The hotel buffets - I'll continue to talk to you, understanding that I, too, am a great sinner, if you go there.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Hotel buffet in Kunming

(1) The organized mass influence on government, both globally and within the country. Large organizations can oppress largely.
(2) Yes.
(3) Depends largely on the way in which wealth is distributed, I think, both globally and within the country.
(4) I can't.

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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.