I think that bugs from childcare would show as well identifiable sicknesses, and not limited to just you. After few years in place, you would already share most common resistances with your close ones anyway.
How's your wife or others in immediate family feeling?
Store Forest is indeed worth a visit and can be done in a day from Kunming.
Further east in Luoping rapeseed bloomng season is over so you may want to save that for another time. Well, there are still hills. And it may take a sleepover there.
Within city, I don't think that there is anything particularly beautiful.... Dianchi you will get a look on if you do Western Hills. Everything else is pretty much man-made structures that you can see in many Chinese cities.
If mountains interest you, then there is Jiaozi Snow Mountain (not sure if it still has snow cover at this time) close to Kunming, and Tiger Leaping Gorge between Dali and Lijiang, but both may be out of your time schedule.
I believe that best photographic season here might be around end of January, when you have chance to see both Luoping hills and Yuanyang rice terraces in full beauty.
So we got back from Hong Kong today.
And there weren't any problems with my wife and son travelling there and back, using the Entry & Exit Permit type "L" (for tour groups), as individual travellers.
She didn't need to buy any endorsement from Taobao or register with any tour group, we just went with the permits that they had.
I'm not sure if a factor in being able to do that was that she was travelling and doing all check-ins with a toddler and foreign husband, via courtesy channels when available. Could have been different without one or the other.
We had some a couchsurfing couple staying with us few years ago, who had stayed at a farm (in southern Sichuan, if I recall correctly) advertising with ecological and organic farming. The farm was running some program to invite people to stay and "help with the farm work" in echange for lodging, or ecotourism more generally.
But what they saw, was that only a small area within the farm was reserved for this kind of production (as some kind of showroom), while vast majority of the grounds and work on the farm (and probably income as well) came from more "traditional" farming involving dumping the animals full of growth hormones and little caring for their wellbeing.
So indeed, how can you trust what anyone advertises... especially in China, where investigative journalism is very restricted, and critical thinking probably quite uneducated.
We usually buy meat from Q-Life (or some such) supermarket in downstairs of TongDe Plaza mall close to Beijing Lu/BaiYun Lu intersection. They also advertise with these urban values, but who knows...
It's sufficient for us, and some of the staff has befriended us since I used to buy chicken soup to my wife from there when she had freshly (and organically!) delivered our baby, who they have then observed growing up.
I don't necessarily think that it is a blow to competitiveness overall, just blow to foreign high-end professionals there.
Remember that these new deductions are now available also to Chinese nationals.
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In interview, Yunnan Party chief stresses ending poverty
发布者@Geogramatt: "Why the rush? Let this generation pass peacefully. The young all want to leave anyway."
I would think that it makes China look bad (and that's what the leadership cares, despite what their actions sometimes come through as), if there are so many elder people left behind in undeveloped rural homes.
Combine this with left behind children, who often are seen sharing those poor living conditions with their grandparents (if even that).. If the elderly are migrated to better housing closer to even minimal services, then so would their grandchildren - and that's for the future, right now.
In interview, Yunnan Party chief stresses ending poverty
发布者As of late, Chinese pro-party commentators have repeatedly mentioned that Deng never said that it is glorious to be rich for everyone - they argue that Deng always meant for select few to become rich first, and rest later.
If much of China growth, or at least opening the potential to it, can be attributed to reforms that Deng initiated, then just as much of the so-called economic injustice (or relative poverty) can be attributed to those same political decisions - not so much people unintentionally falling off the wagon of development and economic prosperity, as is case in some western countries.
Secondly, the culture of shared poverty being the glorious thing (that the previous generations were forced to), would not have disappeared over night.
I have witnessed the internal conflict in some elderly rural residents in Yunnan, torn between being angry for not getting to enjoy the fruits of China's growth on one hand, and not accepting the steps that would be needed to pick the fruits on the other hand.
Bureaucratic declaration limits Yunnan countryside fun
发布者I was at a rural funeral in Yunnan last autumn, and throughout the event there was a bookkeeper registering and writing down all donations.'
Back then I understood that the family had purchased the feast for a certain price, and this communal bookkeeper was subtracting the payment for that from all those donations.
But in light of this article, I wouldn't be surprised if he served some administrative role as well.
Migrant workers receive bricks in lieu of pay
发布者Chinese state does have some economic muscle, and tradition of state-owned enterprising. I think that the state should jump in here.
They could confistace this kind of non-monetary resources (like bricks, or frozen french fries), pay market price to the employees, and then sell the goods back to the market (or donate to charity) through it's own channels.
But I guess there is more bucks in cigarattes and oil.
Migrant workers receive bricks in lieu of pay
发布者@alienew: "drive investors to go to places where they can get away"
Well, technically it would drive them away to places where they can get away with unpaid wages in some other ways than being beaten to death.
Preferably the alternative would be a more civilized way to lose face than doing so concretically.
The process somewhere else would be that after 1-2 months salary is unpaid, the employees quit and contact union, which then more or less peacefully negotiates the best possible solution between the employer and the employee.
The workers can then choose better representatives, if the union-led negotiations still produce nothing but bricks as compensation for unpaid wages.
The problem in China is that if you quit, there are 10 other guys waiting to take your position regardless of how you were dealt with.
But in that scale, there is usually just 1 guy offering those positions, and if he or she is dealt with this way, there may not be another guy taking his place.