In some areas (e.g., Wenlinjie and Wenhuaxiang) commercial rents have skyrocketed - feudal capital accumulation, basically.)

Ok, ok, be careful you lowlanders who somehow have never known about this. For most who have just arrived, it's highly unlikely to be anything like serious - and to his/her credit, dragon admits this. Those who contemplate moving to Zhongdian (Shangri-la) might pay a bit more attention; anybody who goes higher should either know it already or not go. Usual experience of new arrivals in Kunming from somewhere lower is simply a matter of perhaps being a bit short-winded for a week or so, leading to drinking, perhaps, a bit more water when they get thirsty, no harm done. However, for the water you can substitute the low-alcohol local beer, as many of us beerdrinkers have found out, to our disappointment. As for locals carrying bottles of water around, I don't think it's a function of altitude - massively popular in Hong Kong, for instance, as well as in other areas of lower altitudes (yes, yes, in Hong Kong it's hot, we must all be aware of heatstroke etc.)

I fully expect the great majority to pull through.

@Kurtosis: Restaurant and food prices - maybe this affects all of us, but who'd really getting squeezed here? Have the farmers, the workers in restaurants and in the market been getting a better deal than they had before? If so, I think it should be okay with most of the (mostly western) foreigners I know, but I have a hunch that maybe the farmers and workers are not the source of the 'problem', nor that they are really the beneficiaries either - seems to me it's been the middle and upper classes that have probably seen increases in their incomes. And it's still okay with me if teachers get a raise too.

@Dragon: Apologies for my last post, I didn't really need to do that - the info you provide makes sense, it's just that I've never met anyone in Kunming who might really need it, in Kunming - yeah, ok, I'm sure there may be an exception somewhere.

@Marko: I don't know of city pigeons being caught and cooked in Kunming, though it might be done occasionally by the very poor - do you?