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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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As 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.

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There 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.

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Talking 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.

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There 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.

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.