Bizarre advice from @AlexKMG: do you regularly eat food that tastes bad just because you paid for it? Where do you draw the line?

While your mushrooms might have been off, taste is no indicator of poisonous mushrooms: not so many people would die of mushrooms if they had a taste indicating 'poison!'. Neither is appearance, the problem being that edible, inedible and poisonous ones can look very much alike.

As for special Yunnan mushrooms, a poisonous variety has even its own wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunnan_sudden_death_syndrome
A case where taste certainly was no indicator and since they work on a time-delay, the link between the mushrooms and deaths was not obvious.

Mushrooms are certainly a big business in Yunnan: today saw lots of women come down from the mountains near Shiping with baskets full of freshly picked mushrooms. But it did not look anywhere as big as the mushroom markets in in the north. Was once inside a very large mushroom processing plant in Shaxi: about 50 people working in what from the outside looked just like an ordinary farmhouse, with a truck parked so in front of the entrance that no-one passing by could look inside. Zhongdian has an interesting mushroom market where the locals sell individual mushrooms to wholesale buyers, with perfect specimens fetching more than 20Y each.

On the 7th floor near Xiaoximen we used to have water only from about 5pm to 8am since right after Chunjie (when the water pressure was first lowered), but since the end of May this has been reduced to about 6pm to 9pm, which sucks significantly more. Intermittently there were days when the water did not come back in the evening.

Our flat is affected because it is neither low enough to not be affected by the lowered pressure, nor high enough to have a pumping/storage system. We do have a pump, but now the pressure is too low for the pump to operate. Many households in Kunming are either low enough or are part of a compound with intermediate water storage and I would assume that they have done little to reduce their water consumption.

I do not expect the situation to improve in the medium future: It will take a very rainy season to fill entirely empty reservoirs, so any decision to raise water pressure again is unlikely to be taken before October or even next April when they know how dry the dry season was. And then with KM growing as it is the demand for water is constantly increasing with few new sources available in the short term.

Just having water from the evening to the morning was inconvenient, but doable. Just three hours of water is significantly more painful. However, with water just a few minutes every other day, I would just move.

As usual the main events are held at the stadium, including the main races and a big song and dance show, but there is also an outdoor racing event at the southern end of the airport runway, in 尼史 village.

I do not know anything about Majiang nor their blue-berry festival, but a bit of googling gives this: www.chinadaily.com.cn/[...]

Quite apparently the festival is on July 21 this year. From the little information available, this is a festival held to drum up a bit of tourism rather than a traditional event.

These festivals are all very much alike with the main event being the opening ceremony, an almost TV-like show with presenters introducing a line-up of song-and-dance performances by the local minorities (in this case probably mostly Miao) and speeches by the leadership. The opening ceremony is either held the evening before or in the morning, with the side program of a market and fair attended by the local population. There will be TV and an increasing number of Chinese 'photographers' with rather expensive cameras.

If you are planning on travelling there, I would advise to arrive on July 19 at the latest to secure a room in a hotel, if you arrive just the day before everything might be booked. The day before the festival is often better for photos as the shows are rehearsed without the TV and spectators being there, so you can get closer to the performers. Arriving early you can also find out exactly when the performance takes place and what else is scheduled by asking for a programme 节目.

The actual performances are getting more and more professional. The best seats are always reserved for the leadership, but being a foreigner usually assures a way of getting into a good position (the trade-off is that you will be interviewed by local TV). If it looks like a rather large event, it helps to find someone responsible from the Culture Office 文化局 to get a VIP pass 贵宾卡. There is always good food laid on for the important people and showing up at the right time assures a free meal of local delicacies that you would not normally find.

While this might sound a bit jaded, these festivals are a good opportunity to see places where few (if any) western tourists go, get a few snaps of costumes now worn only for very special occasions with a bit of show on the side. Enjoy.

I used to get mine at the zoo's main entrance. They have funny rules as they sell them only on specific dates, like either only on the last or first three days of the month (sorry, I forgot which ones) and at a counter to the back of the ticket building. 年卡 was the thing to ask for. Photo and ID was required, IIRC. The zoo card was then good for all other places, I assumed that would be the case for Haigeng too, but maybe I was wrong.