Yes, probably every year somebody gets the wrong mushrooms and actually dies, but considering the number of mushroom hotpot restaurants ,and the popularity of mushrooms locally, the percentage of those who are seriously poisoned must be pretty low - it's unlikely that they will be a major danger to you here (cf traffic, various 'natural' causes, etc.)
I have personally known 2 people (in 13 years) who got high by accident from mushrooms, one at a restaurant and one when her father cooked some up (her father wasn't affected at all by the same dish, for some reason).
Have eaten a few recreational shrooms while here myself - they were local, I'm pretty sure - were not fantastic as a high, although there are SO MANY varieties in Yunnan that there must be somebody somewhere who knows which ones to get. However, I wouldn't trust my own judgement to pick any, and in the market I only buy the few that I recognize to cook with.
A look at Yunnan's evolving anti-drug strategy
发布者@redjon: right - putting it in the same discussion is not only inaccurate, it's downright dangerous, especially for kids who don't know & who are tempted to experiment.
China considering plan to make Xinjiang desert a new California
发布者Sections of rivers that flow through different nations cannot be thought of as, simply, national property; national regimes ultimately cannot deal adequately or justly with global problems, because they will not.
Yunnan scientists find fungus with an appetite for plastic in rubbish dump
发布者This looks like a good thing.
Exploring history: Jianshui through the ages
发布者I went to a workshop one evening there several years ago, was interesting to see the pottery being made.
$17 billion Chongqing-Kunming railway nears completion
发布者Spartans, Guangzhou is farther away than Chongqing, but you can get to Guangzhou by train in less than 6 hours. Is the flight faster? So what?
I've observed that it's often the case that the faster you go, the less time you have.