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Forums > Living in Kunming > Carrefour Giving Up On China

Carrefour is selling and 80% stake, does not necessarily mean that stores will close. Initially stores and staff will be absorbed by the new owner Sunning. For those areas that do not currently have a Sunning presence, t first all that will change will be the name on the door.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Carrefour Giving Up On China

Airless holes. I think that sums up a lot of superstores/hypermarkets, in many parts of the world, that are located in a larger multistorey shopping complex. True for Walmart, Homemart, Sunning, Metro, and other places I have visited.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Bike registered - Selling second hand

The authorities have been trying to control the ebike market for several years and previous attempts have not been successful. This time I believe it will be successful.

Almost daily I see police with a recovery/flatbed vehicle seizing unregistered machines. There seems to be a clear mandate to get the no longer legal ebikes off of the road.
Like @JanJal, I thing the main issues have been around safety. When I first came to China in 2004 ebikes were small, light, and only did about 20kph. I also believe they were only 12 v.
Now ebikes are bigger and heavier than a gas scooter, 72V and capable of over 60kph, and still no license, insurance, or training is required to ride one.

I have been hit by an ebike once, whilst riding my bicycle, and nearly been wiped out on at least two other occasions by kamikaze ebike riders.

I have seen several ebike crashes caused by riders who do not have proper control of their vehicle (using feet as brakes, slamming on the front bike causing a low-side and dropping the machine, panicking and just freezing as they plow into other vehicles), this is a training issue. Alternative, let the untrained ride smaller and slower machines.

The market needed controlling. Yes there will be some waste, but in the next 4 years some sanity will quickly return to the streets and cycle paths.
The alternatives are to let the 'arms race' (bigger faster ebikes) and carnage continue, or do what other cities have done and ban ebikes and bikes from downtown (more cars would be the pattern, not desirable), or let the old bikes die through natural wastage (bureaucratic and uncontrollable).

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You probably couldn't get a mandate to redevelop an area and build an underground shopping mall. Especially if it causes major disruption.

There is an existing mandate to build bomb shelters, and there are added benefits to both the infrastructure and opportunities for business that can be captured too :-)

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My university and tertiary students only had lectures between 8am and noon, Many didn't even turn up for lectures, but would turn up for exams. There is an old joke in China, that university is hard to get in (Gaokao), but easy to get out (very hard to fail). I was told by my Dean, in one provincial level uni., that if SS failed and exam they would resit up to twice and would be given an automatic pass after the second resit.

At a tertiary college in Kunming, I had about 30 regular SS out of 60 on the register, but 110 turned in exam papers. Half of them scored less than 30% (and I had pretty much told them the answers and where to find them (in the PPTs I gave them). Lo and behold, I was told by management that the SS all had to pass, including the guy who got 9%.

The problems of students staying in the dormitories, not working and playing computer games has been in the Chinese news several times in recent years. Unless the authorities have got a grip of this recently, I doubt it will have changed.

Reviews

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A reasonable choice of lumber that has improved over time. Fancy hardwoods like walnut, and mahogany are in abundance. There are some plywood and rubber-wood boards available. There are also some kiln dried imported softwoods and merbao available. Some of the lumber is very green, so look for the kiln dried if you need stable timbers.

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Echo everything said by others.
Breakfast great and the serve from 8am. Most other places say 9am and they still are not ready.
Sandwiches are cheap 22-32, and really packed full of filling. We got some sandwiches for a day out, the only mistake I made was ordering two, as this was too much. These are seriously good sangars, and they are wrapped in alu foil.

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In fairness to Metro, they are a wholesalers, and not really a supermarket. Hence the need for a card, which can be got around.

They have improved in the year I have been away. They now carry a more consistent range of imported foodstuffs and they also seem to have sorted out the mported milk supply.

They have a wider range of electrical appliances now, there is a coice of more than one toast. There is also a better range of seasonal non foods, like clothes, shoes, garden furniture and camping gear.