Tzu Chi Foundation (慈济, CiJi) often travel (via hired chartered buses) to rural outskirts 50-150km (or farther) from Kunming to provide supplies & assistance to those in need.
This Kunming-based charity organization may welcome foreign English teachers for their frequent missions. Not sure. You'll have to touch base with the Tzu Chi volunteer leaders (info end of post).
Many of the members are Buddhists, but you don't have to be one to join. Compassion & time, all that are required. Tzu Chi has world-wide reach. Their members consist of retired or active professionals with day jobs who find free time to help the impoverished, the sick, the foster children, or the elders.
For reference, here's an old English article published by their foundation, titled "Tzu Chi Delivers Winter Aid to Thousands Across China - Yunnan:"
Then POTUS Bill Clinton couldn’t dissuade the caning of American graffiti kid in Singapore. Granted punishment strokes were reduced as a show of diplomatic goodwill.
The most infamous among Singapore's laws was forbidding gum chewing. If memory serves right, the gum ban was the city-state's response to a bygone social protest of sticking gum all over the transit system.
That said, officers eschewed enforcement of gum chewing. Trivial restrictions are regularly overlooked to avoid reigniting social unrest. Outside Orchard Road, locals chew gums (smuggled from Malaysian border) or spit regardless. After all, they're just gum, not guns.
Department store bathroom smokers will annoyingly persist. Cameras won't be installed in WCs anytime soon...
but outside smokey water closets, the advent of A.I. surveillance w/ automatic social credit deductions may pick up the slack in the cat & mouse enforcement game.
Newly developed machine learning cameras will be upgraded with capabilities of identifying civilians by their walking gait and body shape in the event faces are concealed from view. Detection accuracy will be in question, but incrementally fine-tuned. That’s the neural network power of machine learning.
This harks back to the discussion from another thread on why vehicles have begun yielding to pedestrians at intersections.
Rules are abided when laws are strictly and automatically enforced. Civility ensues when drivers receive instant text messages of ticket penalties as caught by automated traffic cameras. Just don't read the messages while driving.
---------
In regards to popular online gaming, which Chinese youths are seemingly addicted to these days. It’s my understanding Tencent Holdings Limited (parent of WeChat/QQ) monopolizes the gaming industry in China.
Piggyback off the omnipresence of smartphones, Tencent’s multiplayer online battles such as role-playing Honour of Kings harbor 200 million monthly subscribers. This and other popular blockchain esports require players to login and verify age in order to connect with the vast online community of gamers in real-time. These aren’t the standalone, offline games one would download from torrent magnets.
Like Alipay/Wepay cashless payment services @tiger mentioned, players’ personal records and transaction history are logged. Gaming accounts with mandatory age verification are linked to police database. So for the vast majority, they can and will be traced.
Tencent will readily hand over jurisdiction of user profiles if called upon from higher power. Minors or adolescents who play nonstop would be automatically logged off from the games. The "nanny" eyes of T.J. Eckleburg will be watching your child.
For those heading northwest next month, you're in luck!
The new high speed rail section from Dali to Lijiang is scheduled to run in December. The 161 km public maiden voyage will only take 50 minutes. Hence, approximately 3 hours from Kunming to Lijiang (vice versa) via the high speed rail.
which begs the question. When is surveillance too much?
Like Ray Bradbury, dystopian novelists paint doom & gloom not to predict the future, but to prevent it. Figuratively & literally speaking, firefighters create burnout control lines to prevent the flames from escaping the boundaries...
apparently the downwind of surveillance and societal control is blowing faster in our direction than anticipated.
Linked from Best of Kunming Awards 2018, this post is in need of an update. The convenience of KRT XiShan Park Station at end of Line 3 with the blossoming of traditional Yunnan eateries along the mouth of the entrance.
Reading and reading... waiting for the Stephen-King-esque horror to unfold. Thanks Pat for click-baiting your followers. No entrails spillin' out this time. lol
For regular seagull feeders, bring your empty bags to 100 meters up South Gate of Green Lake to fill up on free gull food pellets (鸥粮) provided by the city government. Monday - Friday around 9am. The avian "man-eaters" will be waiting.
A bit of devil advocacy in the second half of my post.
Firstly, @mike's geological history is fascinating. It explains the eastward bending of the river system.
Yunnan only receives the tributaries, while the actual Yangtze River cuts through our northern provincial neighbors like Sichuan (e.g. Jiuzhaigou National Park) and snaking through Chongqing's central district.
The breadth of Yangtze is remarkable. Flowing down from Tanggula Mountain of Tibet at peak elevation of over 5,000 meters. This river not only has erected cities & civilizations like the flow of collective "tired and poor" hands of ruralites... but cultivated the ecology for forests and wild life prior to the dawn of humans.
————————-
That said, it's promising that China is reducing coal-fired power plants with renewable hydropower energy in an effort to curb climate change. Yet when hydropower plants are excessively built to overcapacity for profit-driven energy exports at the expense of local ecology, the amount of oversight from Beijing comes to question.
Below is a simple chart showing "Share of global hydropower capacity, by country:"
Yes, China leads in hydropower capacity by a huge margin. A surplus over consumption for the time being. However, the bigger picture of greater precedence over peafowls is untold by above piece.
Neighboring nations facing power outages like Pakistan, Laos, Myanmar, and even Russia are in need of electricity imports from China.
China's State Grid adopts the UHV (ultra high-voltage) cable technology to transfer said electricity to energy deprived regions in not only Asia, but to Africa, and as far as Germany.
The State Grid's long-game is to deploy world's first "global electricity grid" standard. Potentially expanding regional power grids of clean energy to more remote corners, such as in South America and Africa. In an effort of consolidation, China has already invested heavily in numerous power utilities overseas. From Portugal to the Philippines.
This grand ambition is not only a win-win in tackling global warming while vying for industry dominance as offshore hydroelectric projects are built by the Chinese. But expanding access of clean energy to remote regions lacking in infrastructures also serves a global humanitarian purpose: the betterment of societies and lives.
The balancing acts between global warming & local environmental protection, and between profit and diplomacy. Unfortunately, peafowls won't have a say in all of this.
Not sure if Germany or UK subsidiaries of Airbus would embrace the idea their proprietary know-hows could potentially be reversed engineered by China's ambitious homegrown COMAC.
Getting Away: Xishan
Posted byLinked from Best of Kunming Awards 2018, this post is in need of an update. The convenience of KRT XiShan Park Station at end of Line 3 with the blossoming of traditional Yunnan eateries along the mouth of the entrance.
Bread-wrapped man devoured by gulls in Kunming
Posted byReading and reading... waiting for the Stephen-King-esque horror to unfold. Thanks Pat for click-baiting your followers. No entrails spillin' out this time. lol
For regular seagull feeders, bring your empty bags to 100 meters up South Gate of Green Lake to fill up on free gull food pellets (鸥粮) provided by the city government. Monday - Friday around 9am. The avian "man-eaters" will be waiting.
NGO sues Yunnan dam developer over environmental degradation
Posted byWhat's your interpretation of progress & development?
66 million 农民 Chinese were lifted out of poverty within the last five years. 500 million within the last three decades.
Some would argue that is progress. The benefits of development.
Granted President Xi would be the first to admit mission is far from accomplished.
NGO sues Yunnan dam developer over environmental degradation
Posted byA bit of devil advocacy in the second half of my post.
Firstly, @mike's geological history is fascinating. It explains the eastward bending of the river system.
Yunnan only receives the tributaries, while the actual Yangtze River cuts through our northern provincial neighbors like Sichuan (e.g. Jiuzhaigou National Park) and snaking through Chongqing's central district.
The breadth of Yangtze is remarkable. Flowing down from Tanggula Mountain of Tibet at peak elevation of over 5,000 meters. This river not only has erected cities & civilizations like the flow of collective "tired and poor" hands of ruralites... but cultivated the ecology for forests and wild life prior to the dawn of humans.
————————-
That said, it's promising that China is reducing coal-fired power plants with renewable hydropower energy in an effort to curb climate change. Yet when hydropower plants are excessively built to overcapacity for profit-driven energy exports at the expense of local ecology, the amount of oversight from Beijing comes to question.
Below is a simple chart showing "Share of global hydropower capacity, by country:"
www.theatlas.com/charts/Hka8gcGeQ
—
Yes, China leads in hydropower capacity by a huge margin. A surplus over consumption for the time being. However, the bigger picture of greater precedence over peafowls is untold by above piece.
Neighboring nations facing power outages like Pakistan, Laos, Myanmar, and even Russia are in need of electricity imports from China.
China's State Grid adopts the UHV (ultra high-voltage) cable technology to transfer said electricity to energy deprived regions in not only Asia, but to Africa, and as far as Germany.
The State Grid's long-game is to deploy world's first "global electricity grid" standard. Potentially expanding regional power grids of clean energy to more remote corners, such as in South America and Africa. In an effort of consolidation, China has already invested heavily in numerous power utilities overseas. From Portugal to the Philippines.
This grand ambition is not only a win-win in tackling global warming while vying for industry dominance as offshore hydroelectric projects are built by the Chinese. But expanding access of clean energy to remote regions lacking in infrastructures also serves a global humanitarian purpose: the betterment of societies and lives.
The balancing acts between global warming & local environmental protection, and between profit and diplomacy. Unfortunately, peafowls won't have a say in all of this.
Alliance Française opens in Yunnan's capital city
Posted byNot sure if Germany or UK subsidiaries of Airbus would embrace the idea their proprietary know-hows could potentially be reversed engineered by China's ambitious homegrown COMAC.