You're going to need a connection to be a visiting scholar. Try contacting the Foreign Affairs Office of various universities throughout Kunming/Pu'er. Good luck. Getting a research permit from the provincial government can be a bit tricky.

In my experience, foreigners living in Kunming generally tend to acquire Mandarin quicker and get it to a higher level before plateauing. Back when I was doing language studies at Yun Da, I met a bunch of Western students who had done language programs in Shanghai and Beijing. They were unanimous in agreeing that foreigners in Kunming had *in general* a stronger command of Mandarin than ones they had met in their language programs in Shanghai/Beijing. Obviously they cannot represent all of SH/BJ, but what I've seen generally tends to support their observation.

Some of it might be from how few Westerners live here compared to some of the other metropolises, so you're pretty much forced to speak Mandarin. At least, that was my experience in language classes, since most of my classmates came from Southeast Asia or Korea. The BRI is only going to bring more and more students from non-Western nations to Kunming to study Mandarin and pursue degree programs.

The accent has never really been a huge issue, here. It was a bit strange at first, like any new thing, but then your ear adjusts and basic words and phrases start to become discernible. I mean, it's not like Yunnan dialects are that linguistically far removed from Mandarin (barring minority dialects). In general, it's rare I come across someone I fully can't understand.

This is all anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt. If I could go back in time and select a place to study Mandarin, Kunming would definitely still be high on the list. It'd probably lose out to Xiamen, though. That city is great.

Try a vegetarian Buddhist buffet. They tend to source higher-quality ingredients and in general have pretty hygienic kitchen practices.

What work?

I mean, are the slew of eyewitness reports not convincing enough for you? (supchina.com/[...] / apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b / www.rfa.org/[...] / www.albawaba.com/[...]

Is the UN's report of condemnation "infamous hearsay"? (i.redditmedia.com/[...] / www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45364689 / www.reuters.com/[...] / www.theguardian.com/[...]

And you realize Xi's own party organs have declared Islam a "contagious disease"? (nymag.com/[...] / www.theatlantic.com/[...]

I highly recommend looking at Twitter more if you want to see direct access to journalists, human rights activists, and others' eyewitness accounts in the area. The mountain of evidence overwhelmingly suggests to me that these camps exist. There are videos and pictures of them. There are interviews of those who have been ripped from their families and illegally incarcerated.

Anecdotally, as to the "relative inclusiveness of Muslim communities here in Kunming," my Muslim friends all over Yunnan paint a very different picture of the way they are treated.