eBikes are the same as mopeds, right?
I don't see any problem with this. In the United States, mopeds require drivers licenses. Why shouldn't they in China? They are motorized vehicles.

"this is quite unreasonable and is a low blow to middle and lower class residents, practically forcing them to either ride a bicycle (which although not bad, is not convenient for most"

Why are bicycles not convenient? During rush hour they can go faster than ebikes because they can fit through narrower passages in the traffic than ebikes can.

"particularly in the hot months"

Hot months? This is Kunming we're talking about, right?

The only legitimate excuse I've heard for bicycling being inconvenient is from girls who like to wear skirts.

48. Walkable neighborhoods. (Most) everything you need is within walking distance of anywhere you are in the city. No need to own a car. Your own two feet or a bicycle are plenty to get you around.

49. Urban density. Depending on your ascetics and comfort level, this might be a bad thing, but in my view its a good thing and something some countries are seriously lacking. Its good both from an environmental perspective (more people concentrated on less land means more efficient use of resources, strongly connected to my walkability point in 48. as well as to the feasibility of urban mass transit), and from a cultural perspective (more people on the streets means better people watching, more opportunities for the chance encounters that fill life's voids)

50. Street vendors. Tofu? Baked sweet potatoes. Peeled water chestnuts? Sliced watermelon? They've got it all

slideshows of Chinese "ghost cities" have been making the rounds on the internet recently
and Chenggong always seems to be included, full of false information in the caption

business week is no different (see link below), but its caption is particularly egregious.
A) Chenggong was never meant for just Yunnan University, or just universities in general, and
B) There is no way that anyone ever predicted 2.3 million students for Yunnan University. Um yeah....76% of the population of Kunming as Yunnan University students?!

www.businessinsider.com/[...]

For the last month or so I've had zero water in the morning, low pressure water in the late afternoon, and (if lucky) regular pressure water in the evening.

I have a flash water heater which requires regular pressure to activate the heating mechanism, so with low pressure although I have cold water, there's no hot water.

I live in an old apartment complex.

My friends in new high rises don't have any problems with their water at all.

Is this the government favoring the rich and discriminating against the poor and middle class? Or is this more because of the physical infrastructure?

Is there anywhere else in the world (apart from China) with as many tunnels and as much total tunnel length on a single length of highway as there is in this place in China?

The G8011 Mengzi-Hekou (蒙自－河口) expressway is hundreds of kilometers from the nearest major city, Kunming, but it contains what I believe to be one of the world's most impressive collections of tunnels. Over a length of 23.3 kilometers, the G8011 descends 850 meters in elevation into the Red River Valley (红河谷), passing through 14 tunnels, three of which are over 1000 meters long, and which add up to a total of 10,244 meters of length, making 44% of this stretch of highway tunnels (if the final tunnel is excluded, 9.528 meters of tunnels over 18.9 km of highway calculates to an even high proportion of tunnel at 50%).

If you want to examine this stretch of highway for yourself on google earth, then you can check these two sets of coordinates:

A) 23°06'39.58" N 103°17'24.93" E
B) 22°58'57.66" N 103°24'39.40" E

Looking for a counterpart in the United States, I calculated that Interstate 70 passes through a total of 6 tunnels while crossing the Colorado Rockies, for a total of 4,915 meters over 252 km of highway, meaning 0.02% is in tunnels. Clearly, there's no comparison here.

Is there anywhere in the world that could match this example I've found from China (excluding other examples in China itself....which are numerous)?

What does this say about Chinese engineering and highway development?
Why are Chinese highways so much more tunnel-intensive? Is it because the landscape is more mountainous and the tunnels are necessary? Or is it because Chinese engineers are more willing to build a tunnel through a mountain than build around it (if so, this presents an interesting departure from the cultural adage that the Chinese method of dealing with a problem is to go around it rather than straight through it).

List of tunnels on 23.3 km of G8011 between 23°06'39.58" N 103°17'24.93" E and 22°58'57.66" N 103°24'39.40" E:

1419 m
1817 m
903 m
208 m
435 m
1343 m
453 m
336 m
178 m
227 m
909 m
320 m
980 m
716 m

total 10,244 meters of tunnels over 23,300 meters of highway
44% tunnels

Excluding the final tunnel:

total 9,528 meters of tunnels over 18,900 meters of highway
50.4% tunnels

I-70 through the Colorado Rockies
Glenwood Springs to Denver 252 km

Eisenhower Tunnel 2700 meters
Beavertail Mountain Tunnel 221 meters
No Name Tunnel 287 meters
Hanging Lake Tunnel 1225 meters
Reverse Curve Tunnel 195 meters
Twin Tunnels 287 meters
total tunnel length in Colorado 4,915 meters
0.02% tunnels