Because I do not want to get other threads off-topic, I will make this one. If you believe or claim some sweeping, negative generalization about Kunming or Chinese food, then please post the actual evidence in this thread. For example, if you believe any of the following:

1. All lamb barbecue is actually rat meat.
2. All Kunming restaurants use sewer oil.
3. All Kunming food is fake and disgusting.

etc.

Then please post the verifiable, concrete evidence here.

You're the only one who said lamb barbecue is rat meat. Others have claimed its duck, or goat (as I have), or some other mystery meat.

Actually, one other poster mentioned rat. But in either case, those who believe it is duck or goat, I would like to see the actual evidence here.

Could the lamb actually be baby goat? Just kidding!

Ocean haha, maybe so!

The problem is that media reports gutter oil, but it's impossible to know how pervasive the problem is. And so some people play it safe and avoid most restaurant food.

Maybe it's unethical for the media to be printing these reports at all unless the reports specify which restaurants are the culprits because it creates paranoia.

Everyone who has had lamb back home and then turned up in Kunming and had a "lamb" skewer off the street in Kunming has deep down always suspected it's not as advertised. But given most foreigners are trusting and accepting and then it's reinforced by every vendor in the city selling the same thing more or less and calling it lamb, most of us just accept it. I just returned from Qinghai and Gansu province and I can tell you what we eat is not lamb. Furthermore, even some locals in Lanzhou are suspicious of their own street market bbq sellers of passing off mystery meat as lamb, and that's in the heart of sheep rearing country. What do you expect we are going to get in Kunming, where honestly, where has one even seen a sheep? We have plenty of goats, and since yang rou can mean goat, that's what I think we are eating, but I could easily believe it's a duck goat combo, but lamb it is not. A week ago, I had real lamb bbq and skewers in Xining and Lanzhou.

The other poster who mentioned rat was for some other meat scandal. You just expediently turned it into your claim.

@Magnifico, there have been gutter oil scandals, and the authorities have shut them down. In like manner, there have been scandals in Paris about using recycled cooking oil.

But surely, a scandal does not justify becoming pathologically paranoid and avoiding ALL the food of an entire nation??

Alex, I have had genuine lamb in Kunming, and at other places, I have had goat. That is true: in the Chinese language, the word can mean both. But see, Chinese people do not look at this as some sort of rip-off scandal: they do not see the big deal. Only foreigners believe that goat is something bad, and lamb is something divine.