Thing to do is to return to the idea of TRAVEL, not waste time and money on so much teleportation, avoid 95% of air travel, save natural resources, see something of the world as she is on the ground where real people live, pollute the air less, etc. You'd be surprised, if you've never tried it, just how much you can learn and experience from traveling and staying off airplanes - the world may be inconvenient, but it's really quite interesting. Take the earplugs out of your ears and get off the music haze too.

Back to the point: if you were overcharged at either the Wicker Basket or the French Cafe it was a mistake by the staff, not an attempt to rip you off. The price of coffee is what it is because those who own foreign-oriented cafes etc. in Kunming can get it. And yes, staff of such places are usually underpaid, though less underpaid than plenty of other restaurant workers here. Underpayment of staff is a product of competition in private enterprise, which often produces what in the short run appears as 'efficiency'.

What Tommann said. And why would anybody help concentrate the world's wealth in the hands of the people who own McDonald's, KFC, etc.?

Hard to meet people here? I can't figure out what you're talking about. Ageism? Less than I've seen almost everywhere else.

Perhaps some of you folks need to clarify differences between discrimination and racism. Take Brazil - there is prejudice in favor of light skin, but there is a great range of terms to describe skin colors, but no single racial dividing line. In North America, however, people imagine 2 different 'races', and then talk about race mixing, mixed bloods etc.

Recommended: The Race Concept, Michael Banton and Jonathan Harwood, pub. 1975.