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Forums > Living in Kunming > Musician advice needed for street performance

You can start street performing without any amplification. That way you can experience what it will be like, without laying out more money first, and you won't need a van or car for moving gear. While you are doing this you can see, and hear, what other street performers are using.
There are many street performers on Haigeng Daba every evening and it has become part of 'the scene' there. It is away from traffic/traffic noise and although many of the street performers use amps, they are not needed.
If you don't know Haigeng Daba, it is a promenade next to the lake, that is about 2 km long. People go there in the evenings to walk and relax. To find it, follow Hongta Xi Lu westward until you hit the lake. Or take Dianchi Lu south until and then turn west on Yinghai Lu and go to the end. There are several buses to Haigeng Daba from town.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Transferring money into China

There is a difference between asking price, and actual getting price.

There are many properties for sale where people are asking a price that will get the seller the return that they think they are entitled to. If they cannot get that price they usually do not sell, but they will not lower the asking price. In other words, they will only sell for a profit that meets their expectation, otherwise they will just hang on to the property. It is possible that the apartment you looked at 4 years ago is still for sale.
I know people with 30 properties that they will just not sell, because they cannot get the asking price. There are also companies that have property on their books, that is overvalued. These are just two of the causes of anomalies in the property market.

I am not sure, but I think market statistics could be based on asking price, and not on actual selling prices. This also affects sellers expectations of what they will get. An estate agent told us we could sell a property for between 1million and 1.2 million, we actually sold it for less than 700k.

The actual turnover of second hand property is possibly a low percentage of the actual number of properties on the market.
Even putting this aside. With a rental mutliplier of 800X, property is not a good investment.

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I have noticed a lot more 'black' cabs where I live. One advantage of the little guy now owning a car. They will negotiate, some are greedy just find the next one. They actually line up like a taxi rank where I live.

I agree that the problem is related to the moving away from the Paleao diet. The big shift seems to be more meat (they love high fat cuts), more oil, more noodles, and perhaps more than anything more rice.
Western fast foods, do not exist in my wife's hometown, diabetes, is a major problem there too. The people are also more active than I see in Kuming. The key change in their life has been more affluence.

The population is eating a lot more food generally than they did before. Blaming obesity on western fast food is easy, but I am not sure there is solid causality. Western fast-foods arrived arrived at the same time as more affluence.

The affluence coincided with more processed foods (a western style diet, but not fast foods, or western corporations). Perhaps it would be fairer to call this a developed countries bad diet.

In the supermarket we can see how much store space is dedicated to high fat,high sugar, snacks. These are mostly home market products. Some of the local drinks are much more prevalent than Coke, and have more sugar in them. For the supermarket it is a no brainer what to give shelf space to, as these foods all have high profit margins.

Buying oil and meat used to be a luxury. Now everyone can afford much larger portions, and more frequent consumption of both. My mother in law will admit to consuming more meat in some meals now than she used to get in a month. In the past her main source of oil was rendered animal fats, vegetable oil was store bought and rare.

I see my kids in school. Half of them have parents who understand nutrition, and the kids are consuming a Paleo diet. The other half consume a lot of high carb snacks between meals and eat huge portions of rice and oily foods at the canteen. WangLaoJi is seen as a semi-medicinal stimulant.
Or could draw a correlation between student diet and performance, but that would be unreliable as the kids on a healthy diet have parents who seem to make better choices generally. The educational attitude may also reflect the family values.

Yes, when I first came to China 10 years ago I would maybe see one morbidly obese person, usually a pre-teen, about once per month. Now I see many more daily, and I also see more morbidly obese adults. You can't blame this all on western fast food.
I will use about 5 ltr of oil per year, mostly for baking bread, and less than 1 ltr for frying food. I see a neighbor coming home from the supermarket with that much every week.
People also think Asians are skinny because they eat rice. But rice is a simple carb. Lots of rice leads to fat. Add to that all the oil and sugar.

As for sedentary life, it is a problem, but 11% of the popn. do not live a sedentary life.

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.