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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Dali: bus or train?

You can also book buses from any travel agent. They do pick ups from some hotels in the city, which may be more convenient for you, and cheaper if you avoid a taxi fare.

You pick which bus, there are pictures on a board. Go for the aircon bus, some are Volvo's. These cost 150rmb. The cheap bus is small and cramped and can be smelly.

Book one way.
Loads of agents in the centre of the old city selling bus/coach tickets. All agents are selling the same buses' seats. Or you may fancy the train.

NB, I am not sure, but I don't think the train goes to the Old Dali City, they go to the new city. The new city is maybe 10km from the old city, and so you will need a taxi.

Taxi in Dali do not use the meter, ever! You need to negotiate.
I am not sure what current rates are, I think 25-30rmb others can advise.

Another reason to take the bus.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Cars

We got a new car last month.

First, I assume you have a Chinese driving licence. This is needed for insurance (talk about insurance below)

Procedure was simple.
Firstly you need to go to the police station and register your residence, and if your spouse is Chinese and does not have a Kunming HuKou she will need to register for a temporary residence permit at the same place (needed for vehicle licence, see below). Your spouse will definitely need photos for temp ID. I cannot remember if the expat does.
You will need to take original copies of your leasing agreement for the property you live at. There may even be a form the landlord has to fill in, I can't remember but the cop shop will advise.
Need photocopies of your passport main page and visa.
Total cost so far, about 200rmb.

Now you can buy a car (at any time you can choose a car and if it is not in stock they will order but will require a deposit, not sure how much). I think it is 30% deposit/down-payment required. If needed find a bank to loan you the money. Usually over 3 years, you can get 5 years. GM finance also do loans but are more expensive, and only for GM cars.
Some banks want you to take out loan insurance, not sure how much, but not a lot, and will vary with size of loan.

Pay for car in full, then you can register it. The dealer will usually help with all the process.The dealer, with the vehicle documentation will accompany you to get all the official stuff done.

Insurance agent. There is one in the same area as the Kunming vehicle registration office (call it DMV for ease). Insurance varies on the car. In China it is the car that is insured for any driver, not the driver that is insured. There are different levels of insurance.

Legal minimum is, I think, under 100rmb. This only compensates anyone you kill or injure, basically. Not recommended.
We got fully comprehensive equivalent. If we bend the car, the insurance covers it.

You will be given a certificate and a window sticker (sticker is legal requirement, don't loose it)
Cost of insurance 10.5k for car of value 300k, 3.2 L engine.

Vehicle tax and registration is done at the DMV.
Tax on our car was about 3k, not sure exactly.
We produced our insurance, and registered the car. There is a random numberplate selector on a computer and you have 5 lucky dips and then pick your favourite. You can then get your plates in about half an hour. Or you can try to select a plate of your own, and in a week they will tell you if it is available.

Plates are then given to you and you are given a little Vehicle License Book, you go to another window and you pay a fee, present insurance and they stamp your vehicle license.
Costs, I think under 300 rmb.

The car is now yours.

The dealer can now decorate your car, fit your GPS, tint the windows etc.
Costs unlimited ;-)

I would recommend tinting the windows, and there is a special film for the windscreen that deflects heat. This stops the dashboard from cooking, recommended but will cost more than the rest of the car windows to do.

TOTAL ON THE ROAD COSTS
Depending on the value of the car (small cars are cheaper) the on the road additional costs are about 45k rmb. With tax and insurance. For a car of cost 300k.
I think we were quoted approx on the road costs of 35k for a car of 200k value.

A bit vague on this, sorry.
Your dealer can advise better.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Laowai can teach you Chinese culture

To add to the last posters comments.

I tell my students there are two sides to culture.
What I call high culture: Music, the arts, opera, literature.

And what most of us think of as culture. One useful definition of which is 'How we do things around here'. Which fits in with the last posters observations.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Laowai can teach you Chinese culture

There is a real logic here.
Unless you read up and learn about culture, you are not in a position to teach it.

I had to teach aspects of western culture in my last job. I had to read up a lot, and check some other things that I was not sure about.
I was surprised at how little I knew about my home countries culture. There is far more to culture than just an 'attitude' or gut feeling about your country.

Having studied my own culture I can see how unfit I was to teach it before I studied. My knowledge is still not complete, far from it.

I think that anybody who actively studies Chinese culture is capable of teaching Chinese culture.

Anybody who assumes they can teach others about their own culture without studying it, is naive.

Learning lists of names and dates is not studying culture BTW. That is history, and not very good history knowledge at that.
It is not enough to be able to rattle off a few bits of poetry either.

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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.

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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.

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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.