Forums > Living in Kunming > Used car lots? There is a big one on the way out of Beichen. Follow Beichen DaDao eastwards, past the old B&Q and onto the third ring road. A couple of km up the road on the right is a big car sales area. I am pretty sure it is a car auction place. I may also sell grey imports.
Forums > Living in Kunming > computer advice? There is always Linux, which is open source. The office suite is not as flexible (powerful) as other products, but it is MS Office compatible. Also the range of APPs available for it is smaller than the range of APPs for MS Win OS, but it is getting better.
I have Linux Mint (like windows) on one of my old laptops, and because it is less memory hungry it runs fine on the 15+ years old machine. Because Mint looks similar to a Windows/Mac environment, it is pretty intuitive and pretty easy to adjust too.
I am sure that Linux products and choice of compatibles has moved forward a lot in the 4 years since I had it installed.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Transferring money into China Something I learned a while back, you need to be very specific about the questions you ask, and don't ask open questions.
The BOC employee may have assumed you were talking about cash, in its narrowest sense. You need to specifically state that you want to bring money in to purchase a house. If the bank staff still say no, ask to speak to a manager.
Also make sure you go to the main branch, as sub branch staff (even managers) are often less knowledgeable about their own bank's procedures.
Assuming it is possible for property purchases. If it is done properly, with all of the correct paperwork, you will then have the proper paperwork to take the money out again if you liquidate the property at a future date.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Anyone affected by flooding? Some roads in the xiaoqu were under about 100mm of water before dawn, and houses with basements were affected.
Anyone else affected?
Forums > Living in Kunming > Civilized Kunming On a seperate note. I see they already have the recycle/separation bins for sale in Metro. Not cheap at about 4-5x the price of Taobao.
Beijing attempts to curtail "excessive" government spending
Posted byI bet the guy on the US 100 dollar bill is also spinning in his grave. But for different reasons.
Beijing attempts to curtail "excessive" government spending
Posted byAs for going after the lower level guys.
The fat cats were milking other fat cats.
It is all the little lower level guys that make life difficult for the guy on the street, and expensive for those on low incomes.
It would be nice to think of an egalitarian round up (tigers as well as flies), but most people are plagues by flies, and are unaffected by tigers.
Beijing attempts to curtail "excessive" government spending
Posted byThere are a lot of restaurants in our area. It used to be that there was congestion caused by cars parked at the side of the road. This was most nights of the week. Some places had exotic dishes and high prices.
Now the roads are clear except for festivals, and prices even a middle income family can afford.
You can draw your own conclussions.
Photos of flash flooding in Yunnan's capital
Posted byTalking of construction. One solution is to build a new town from the ground up the adequate infrastructure. This was done in Dali and oops, Chenggong. Shanghai has also built a number of satellite cities/towns.
The accumulated debris is a problem and not all of it is trash, a lot of it is leaves, twigs, and dust/dirt. Often this can not be effectively dealt with until it accumulate. You can have teams going around clearing culverts and grids, but not every bit of debri that could potentially reach the culvert.
This is a universal problem.
Photos of flash flooding in Yunnan's capital
Posted byThere is the same problem in Shanghai and Beijing, the drains are not up to coping with the heavy rains, even though they come yearly.
Urban planning is often about sprawl, without the effort to upgrade the old infrastructure. The norm is to jus connect the new drains to the old. The new drains may even have sufficient capacity, but there is a bottle neck as water reaches the old drains. Until there is the political will to dig up and replace the drains in the older parts of the city (costly and very disruptive to local residents, traffic, and business) we will continue to see occastional flooding. It used to the be same in many towns in the west.