Hi there! Yes, the simple things are the bigger culture shock. Because I’m from the UK, where most people still live in one, two or three storey buildings, I’m not used to hanging washing out in flats — plus, in the UK, my friends who live in flats tend to use low folding things to hang their washing (either over the bathtub or on the balcony). NOT high wires, like you have here…

I didn’t mean that “Chinese style” meant that all Chinese people had squat bathrooms. It’s just that people who advertise in English for foreigners (as I understand it) use “Chinese style” to mean “has squat bathroom “). This may just be a Kunming thing. Some of the buildings have very old plumbing and can’t support Western style WC. I don’t know we’ll have the time to make Hangzhou on this visit, but we hope to be back for longer.

Well, I ended up paying 3500 — so 900 over the rental for the agent’s fee and the utilities. So I’m paying 250 yuan for utilities if he’s charged me the standard 30%. Our internet’s pretty fast, and we’re using sod-all electricity — no A/C or heating thanks to us being in the “spring city”. There do seem to be a lot of expats working here, but they all seem to cluster on one easy strip in the centre, near the university. We’re really liking it here, in fact. Everybody’s very helpful with our attempts to speak Chinese. Z’s constantly dived on by old ladies on the buses. The shops are pretty cool, and there’s minigolf and ice skating in a park outside town. If we’d been staying for longer, I reckon I could have got a similar thing for significantly less — 2500 seems to be about right. But I wasn’t bothered about overpaying slightly for the ease of just settling straight in…

We like Kunming a lot — and, yes, the Western cafes on Wenlin Jie are a magnet. We’re not that far out of the centre at all, really — three or four stops on a bus, and with lots of malls and shops. But it’s more Chinese than Western here by a long shot — we’ve only seen other Westerners in the Wenlin Jie axis. Went to the Haigeng Park yesterday, which is absolutely amazing… Tibet? I’m jealous.

What are you paying for utilities? Our China Telecom internet (‘high’ speed) is 150/month. Water is negligible, as is gas (under 100 each usually) and electricity veers between negligible in mild season (now) and absurd (like 500-1000) during the depths of winter and the awfulness of summer.

Kunming is a place I’d love to live– I’ve heard it’s quite hard to find a job there as a foreigner because competition is fierce!

Interesting — I think we paid, basically, almost exactly 30% plus a slight hit for utilities. He went all the way up to a whole month’s rent, I reckon, just to stop me squeaking about the utilities. That’s a really handy tip, thanks.

And, yes, my impression was — from cruising SmartShanghai.com — that this would be around 8000 in Shanghai, plus whatever short let fee they apply. We are enjoying China immensely. And I’ve just found out that Kunming has one of the largest minigolf courses in Asia. Hope to meet up in Shanghai!

Yes, I carry a) our Rough Guide (with its ABSOLUTELY rubbish Mandarin phrase list at the back) and b) our address written in pinyin, my attempt at phonetic for me and Mandarin everywhere we go. We’re actually picking up quite a few words at the moment, start lessons on Monday and have made ourselves understood…

We got ours negotiated to include the fapiao (a very expensive monthly ‘receipt’ worth 5% of the monthly rent which is required by a lot of work places in order to get your housing allowance reimbursed).

Welcome to China!