Kunming is a city in the Southwestern region of mainland China. While the weather is gorgeous year round, the food outstanding and living costs incredibly affordable, on the surface it may seem to lack what bigger metropolitan Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing can offer culturally to record diggers, music lovers and art aficionados.
But dig a little deeper and you’ll find much more.
This is the story of Kunmings record room; a grandmother selling vinyl out of her 3rd floor apartment(for which she does not advertise). We've visited many times over the years and though she claims she’s no longer acquiring vinyl, her collection is obviously growing and her prices are still very cheap (for now).
Her collection is not just Asian, but lots of music from Europe, the Americas and more. But with restrictions on imported media from the West, where does this diverse collection come from? Oddly enough the bulk of her records come from a very specific place and in a very specific way, a way that’s on the forefront of a much larger discussion currently taking place on a global scale, her records come from the trash barges of other countries.
In this case, one mans trash is literally another mans treasure. 
This is us talking with the owners of this hidden record store as well as songs from the records we found there in between the conversation. We were joined on this day by Angela Gan who grew up in Kunming to help translate the discussion from a local dialect of mandarin to English for this episode.
Thanks a lot for listening, but we can’t help but think of one thing that wasn’t answered in this episode..What happens when the countries who previously accepted the worlds trash start saying no? And what happens to the people who've created their sole source of income based on this trash?
See you next time.

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