Ref showering.
This could also be your shampoo or shower gel. The most common cause of skin reactions.

Even if it says P&G on the bottle, if you bought it from a small shop it probably isn't P&G. If it is local branded cheap stuff, well.... say no more.

But it could be too much chlorine or other chemical in the water. You can usually smell these.

I have been told that, in the big compounds here in the south anyway, they use the mostly treated sewage water for watering plants. This is water that has gone through a sewage system, theoretically cleaned and chemicals added (people told me "medicine" added!) before being pumped... elsewhere... I suspect elsewhere is into the rivers and hence Dianchi!

The veracity of these claims is questionable, but we have smelly water also used on our plants. It definitely isn't the same stuff coming out of our taps and it doesn't have turds flying out of the hoses. So I suspect this is correct. They pump it from holes in the ground, covered with manholes.

It makes sense for the management to re-cycle and lightly treat the waste water. Otherwise they would have to buy water from the water company for watering plants. I assume this would be more expensive. A little poop will be an organic fertilizer.

I have seen the water trucks used for watering the street plants get their water direct from Dianchi near the DaGuan park.

Yep, they also pull it out of the rivers. I don't really have a problem with that, until one goes past on your bike and creates a spray of water that (unless you can hold your breath for about 30 seconds!) you ingest! Although I suppose you are breathing in worse with all the dust flying around...

We use to live in a complex in the North (美景新城) and after 2 years there they started to use that God awful shit smelling water. We lived there for one more year and We were so glad to get out of there. Mind you we lived on the 23rd floor and could still smell it. Yuck!

Ja, i am not very ecological person myself and i am working on that, looking for instance at germany

Pollution is a whole chain i guess. The meat industry is very polluting, specially if the animals are concentrated in unnatural parks and food must be brought to them by trucks. Then you have the whole cold chain which is a kind of disaster.

I try not use chemical detergents and limit water use as well as electritciy.

I try now limit my buying of little things like cigarettes, junk food, plastic bags,cans, etc...

It seems there is an informal recycling process in kunming but no good city policy. Anyone knows of that ?

++++

In general from a philosophical point of view i think the pollution is a sign of a titan age. Like kronos killing his kids, people kill their kids'future with their cars. That is why i call my homeland 'vasktitans', they really swim in their shit near deserted churches.

In budism i guess we might call that psychology if not metaphysics, egui, hungry ghosts. They good at reading mind like in death bardo !