@blue: Your link - what, you think everybody can be an entrepreneur? What about all the people who are needed to allow entrepreneurs to go about 'their' business?

Another side of volunteering, which is implicit in your article but not clearly stated, is that when you refer to 'education' it is not a one-way street - the volunteers can get educated as well. This perhaps also happens to volunteers in such programs as those that fly 'volunteers' from wealthy areas of the planet to faraway, poorer destinations merely to spend 3 weeks or so working on a project in a hands-on capacity - however, virtually all of the benefits of such an approach go to the relatively-wealthy 'volunteer', who doesn't stay long enough to make a serious impact and for whom the expenses and waste of resources for transportation alone probably cancel out the immediate value of any benefits to local people. However, if you're travelling or studying abroad anyway, a chance to participate in the sort of programs you mention here seems like a good idea and a way to benefit everybody.

In the past the attitude of Chinese representatives within the Greater Mekong organization was pretty much that China could do whatever it wanted on rivers within its own territory - just another example of how nationalist 'rights' are not sufficient for handling a globalized world.

See the Arthur Waley translation - his are always better.

@Mike: You've got a good point, but increasing the insulation of pipes would mean really a lot of work and money to take care of the many buildings in Kunming that don't have sufficient insulation at present. Fine idea for new buildings, but then I think we've got more than enough new buildings going up, and construction uses a hell of a lot of water.