Assuming the "hospital recommendations..." thread is still active, you MAY want to try the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) hospital on WuYi Lu. I think it's called the "zhong yi yiyuan". Zhongyi is loosely translated as the TCM Doctor and "yiyuan" is hospital.
MOST taxi drivers know the place. They mix TCM with traditional western medicine, but lean towards the TCM. It's significantly lower cost than most of the other hospitals and has good, reasonable care for both deliveries and post delivery follow up. Cost is about ¥6-8k and they prefer natural deliveries over the c-sections, which are more popular (ostensibly for bikini lines). A c-section costs significantly more and you'll probably be stuck in the hospital for 1-2 weeks in recovery.
As with most Chinese hospitals, you'd better speak Chinese or have an on-call translator. You'll also need to supply your wife AND baby with food or hire one of the many hospital ayi's to help you out (nominal cost). There's a Green Garden restaurant (pricey) that you can have food delivered, from their take-out menu on ZhengYi Lu and Ren Ming Lu, an Islamic restaurant for non-spicy noodles, veggies, fried rice (but no greasy foods for the wife post delivery) AND you'll need to prepare this red thing egg soup (they have hot plates) to provide energy and vitamins post delivery. They hospital Ayi's can help you buy, cook, prepare, and clean the simple cooking things and eating things. I think EVERYONE who delivers babies in Kunming knows these things. You'll also need some high energy chocolate bars for the delivery, in case you go into delivery overtime (snickers bars work well - full of sugar and chocolate/caffeine).
Care is good and they're also a teaching hospital, so expect a small army of interns to duck in at least once a week.
In my personal opinion, most of the major Kunming hospitals are rather identical in terms of care and procedures, so the TCM hospital is popular, on par with the rest, and just less expensive, but again - you'll need good communications skills in Chinese OR an on-call translator.
If you don't have a vehicle or transportation - learn how to use UBER or the other non-taxi limo services to get you there and return you home post-delivery.
On that note - if you need a heavy duty baby stroller specifically for newborns - it's HEAVY but sort of collapsible, drop me a line here or PM (private message) me. I MIGHT be able to convince the wife to just donate it to you gratis.
If this is your first and you live within the 2nd ring road (preferably in the Pan Long district), drop me a line and we can give parenting tips to encourage you during the first 3-6 months - those are the most difficult because of baby's feeding habits (every 3 hours). We did formula with both kids. We used Dr Brown's bottles (glass and or non-toxic plastic) to help reduce gas.
We ordered diapers and baby wipes online - as carrying the boxes and boxes of that stuff is painful and inconvenient, however MOST baby stores in your neighbourhood will deliver if you ask - ESPECIALLY the formula AND they'll give you free gifts when you buy formula in bulk.
We raised our first on NZ formula and the second on the same brand, but made in China. Still pricey, but less than allegedly imported stuff. Wife was paranoid about buying formula online (even from tmall), so we bought formula from a baby store near our home, that we KNEW had been in business for quite some time (there are TWO within about 50 meters of each other).
You'll also need one of those plastic baby bath things (might be able to convince the wife to let ours go as our youngest can now bathe with wifey and prefers the bigger bath tub for maximum splashing joy) and bonding time with mommy.
Get a couple of fluffy but NOT LINTY towels for baby! Don't forget the baby powder and be careful with baby lotion - our kid is allergic to the Johnson's baby lotion. AND you'll need petroleum jelly or a kind of baby cold cream for the inevitable diaper rashes - but if you change the diapers regularly (like before feedings), you should be able to mostly avoid diaper rashes.
We use Pampers diapers, but that's just us...they're pricier, but we've never had problems (ok...we had one bad batch, but the store replaced the entire box with a new one) with leaks.
That's about it for rambling...just PM if you want to meet and or chat.
and remember...luck is NOT a plan...plan ahead, do trial runs to the hospital, regardless of which hospital you choose, and have your grab bags ready to go.
oh...and chinese hospitals tend to be baby machines - so they'll usually schedule your delivery and induce labor if you're too slow or the baby is too comfortable and doesn't want to leave that nice place.
Hope that helps...
University in Yunnan requires students to run 240 kilometers for graduation
Posted byAs a parent - I'd send my kids there just because of that policy. I wonder if it'll spread to state owned companies.
Update: Kunming Metro Line 3 open as of August 29
Posted byWow - thanks for the update(s). This opens a brand new line of journalistic travel reporting fog gokm. What to see & do around each station (temples, eateries, entertainment, etc).
Look forwards to the municipal subway exit travel reporting (for tourists and locals alike).
And you can also do travel video spots for the local tv channels - chinese love (I think) to see foreigners who can speak reasonably fluently and whom are delighted with the local culture(s).
I'm just glad we can finally (maybe) get to dianchi without grabbing taxis, didiche or buses.
Report: Communally owned forests hold key to healthier China re-greening
Posted byCentral government mandates general or qualitative requirements, It is then the responsibility of various provinces to implement quantitative results.
How would one structure sustainable pilot projects, to demonstrate such diversity - to include funding and finance? Each ecosystem is diverse from the next - so to initiate a project requires finance to study the current (or previously existing) bio-diversity, to develop a sustainable plan to move forwards with responsibly and sustainably managed resources.
This requires access to academic and commercial resources - who won't work for free.
Alien's solution is direct, but probably not scalable, sustainable and therefore feasible (too many people - reduce population).
When presenting an issue or problem, it's always a good idea to have at least three potentially feasible solutions for discussion and implementation.
Interview: Brian Eyler on Baihetan, China's second largest dam
Posted byplease forgive the grammatical errors... (example conscious vs conscience)...etc.."dammed" spelling corrector...
Interview: Brian Eyler on Baihetan, China's second largest dam
Posted by@east
Concur with your assessment - but fossil fuels are a known depleting asset, hence the long-term (perhaps beyond our lifespan) national impetus behind these assets.
Also agree that hydropower construction can be infinitely more LEED-ish in their construction behavior.
On that note - many of the more heavily polluting industries such as mining, refineries, etc can be made significantly cleaner through energy based solutions - which we have yet to witness generally in China.
For example, pollution from Guangzhou's fossil plants can energy-assisted technologies currently in use in developed countries - so that's perhaps a hybrid solution that benefits both parties - assuming one can find the funding to implement such technologies AND the project owners are sufficiently motivated to implement such cleaner technology supplements/complements - aka central government mandates, grants, and subsidies.
As for the legendary Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) - those usually come with FIT (Feed in Tariff) agreements - hence the short-term nature of these agreements. We've seen globally that FIT programs are short-term solutions to encourage market entry, but are non-sustainable.
As for grid congestion - that's an issue of planning. As you've noted, China and even developed countries still have not developed the technologies to enable efficient long-distance transmission of power.
Hydropower isn't going away - so the best solution is to hybridize and try to work with what we have to minimize all the valid issues you've raised and do our best to render these systems more ecologically harmonious - example hybridized sluice - where we can still sustainably maintain the downstream environments at a safe but sustainable level.
Too often, commercial and environmental interests stand diametrically opposed and commercial interests typically dominate.
So if you have viable suggestions that can be presented to the NDRC, I'd be more than willing and interested to discuss and perhaps help frame the projects and finance (in English, regrettably), along with potential downstream domestic government and pseudo-government investors, to add to hopefully create a potentially overwhelming sustainable, scalable, and feasible solution that NDRC can in good conscious mandate.
It's not a perfect solution - but perhaps a good first step to more responsible resource utilization and management and infinitely better than standing still, diametrically opposed.
I suppose this would be called "managed wetlands" or something like that (as opposed to eliminated wetlands) - assuming the issue is downstream wetland ecosystems.
Feel free to PM (private mail) me to discuss how to move forwards - perhaps even generate multi-lateral support.
While it may not seem apparent, ALL governmental infrastructure projects require feasibility studies, which include social and environmental impact studies - so the first starting place is to examine those studies, to understand the current standard government logic and behavior in approving and or waiving of those social and environmental costs.
To access this information, you'll absolutely need a strong commercial or government partner - the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.
Again - the objective is to change the working model so we're all actively working together as opposed to butting heads (with a little central government mandate to help encourage the reticent).