David's Big Adventure in China

I have a home! I moved into my apartment here on campus at Yunnan University of Finance and Economics in Kunming (YUFE). I am located near the center of campus and very near the Western Restaurant so western food will be convenient and relatively inexpensive. I have added some pics of the campus which is very pretty. Classes start September 3 and I will find out on August 28 what classes I will be teaching. YUFE has about 12,000 full time students and about 12,000 part time students. Kunming is located in China roughly where Dallas is located in the U.S. and not far from Viet Nam, Laos, and Myanmar. Kunming has a population somewhere between 4 and 5 million and is known as the “Spring City” because of it’s spring like weather year around. It is at an elevation of 6200 feet above sea level. Since I arrived here on Friday the highs have been in the upper 70’s and the lows have been in the low 60’s and very little humidity except for when it rains. The weather here is very similar to Oakland, CA weather (my former home).

My apartment is a small 1 bedroom (about 500 square feet) and because of the weather here does not have a/c or central heat. It’s basic but adequate. The bathroom and the kitchen are pretty much combined except there is a small private room for the toilet which is western style thank goodness! There is a free standing shower unit which is pretty small. If I were a big person I don’t think I could use it. There are advantages to being small! The kitchen consists of a sink, refrigerator, and a small counter with a microwave oven and a hotplate. No western style oven or stove and no cabinets. Since food is so cheap and convenient here I don’t expect to be doing much cooking anyway. I paid 4 yuan (about $.56) for dinner last night at a local noodle place.

Since I have arrived here I have been mostly just been getting set up in my apartment and trying to learn my way around. I went looking for a game of ping pong the other day and found some students playing outdoors not far from my apartment. They were nice enough to allow me to join them. The tables were concrete as was the net but they played pretty much the same as a conventional table. Some of the students are quite good and easily beat me. There are many small local shops and restaurants nearby and there is a Carrefour (French equivalent of Wal-mart supercenter) a little over a mile away which I walked to the other day. While I was there I found a solution to those squatter (hole in the floor) toilets….they had a folding chair with the seat being a toilet seat so you could just position it over the squatter toilet……..I think I laughed out loud when I saw it. There is also a Wal-mart here and I went there yesterday and purchased some American movies that cost 3.9 yuan each (about $.52). There is a bus stop near campus and I jumped on a couple of the buses yesterday just to see where they went and one of them took me to Wal-mart. One thing that I noticed while out and about (and I have seen it in many other cities) are people doing mending or sewing while sitting on a sidewalk using the old manual foot power sewing machines.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got my work visa which is valid for 1 year. In addition to the work visa I have to get a resident permit to live here in Kunming which the university will obtain for me. The university had to take my passport for a day to use it to notify the local police that I am staying on campus until they get my resident permit. The hotels in China are supposed to get info from the passport of any foreigner and report it to the local authorities and a hotel is supposed to be registered to be able to accept foreigners thus not all hotels will accept us. If I stay with a person in their private residence that person is supposed to notify the local authorities. Big brother is alive and well here.

I added a map to the blog and you can see it by clicking on the link under Maps on the right hand side. You can see many of the places I have been on the map. The blogsite keeps stats on visitors and I found it interesting to learn that there have been almost 1200 unique visitors and over 8800 total visits. I know I have 20 to 30 regular readers that are friends and family but I was surprised to see how many visits there have been. Well that’s it for now. Keep those cards and letters coming as I love to hear from all of you!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.