I bet Heavenly Manna has blood in their sweet and sour sauce and their 'russian soup'; it sure tastes of it. In general they probably have blood dishes on the menu given how large it is.

东二Something小餐厅, the next restaurant I'm gonna review on my shabbiness blog, also has blood dishes on the menu (one, at least, and this is know for certain). It's located inside a 小区 directly east of the food street east of Yunda. It's also happen to be Kunming's supreme restaurant in terms of value-for-the-money, so definitely worth a visit.

Makye Ame also used to have basically everything that's weird and animalic, but they recently streamlined their menu and took away some of the really odd items (I think they don't have yak testicle soup anymore, for example), so I dunno if they have blood dishes.

I agree completely with the previous speaker. Go eat at Shípíng Shāokǎo a few times and you'll be immune to everything except cyanide:

kunmingsshabbiest.blog.se/[...]

That said, you could always pay attention to the Food Safety Grades ratings. Though I have yet to find one single A-rated restaurant in all off Kunming, making me think it's mostly about bribes. (I've made a shortpost about this too, here: kunmingsshabbiest.blog.se/omfg-omfg/ )

Sure, I could maybe recommend some restaurants where I myself have never, to my experience, gotten laduzi or food poisoning. However, since I eat at Shípíng Shāokǎo and the Wenlin muslims, my stomach is probably iron-coated by now, so that might not be too useful advice for you.

Though...I have neverheard any laowai ever who claims to have gotten food posioned/laduzi'd by the canteens of Shida and Yunda, -despite- their food being buffets. Unfortunately these two both have rather horrible food, but at least it's cheap. However, In the dormitory area of Yunda, hidden inside a neighborhood directly east of the bustling food street running west-east from Yunda's east gate, is a great and unbelievably cheap restaurant (with an enormous meny, to boot) that few laowai seem to get sick from. It's called 东二something餐厅something, I'll review it on my blog shortly with more precise directions.

It depends totally on your budget. If you wanna live really really cheaply the dorms are okay (at least in Yunnan Normal University), and you'll really save an enormous amount of money - no other accomodation anywhere in Kunming will be even nearly as cheap. This is assuming you live in the chinese/asian dorms where you share a room with people, if Yunda has dorms intented for westerners they'll likely be horribly overpriced.

The other options are to either get a room in a flat, or a whole flat for yourself. Small flats are hard to come by in Kunming, so probably sharing an apartment with somebody or renting a room in somebody's apartment are more realistic options (unless you're rich). If you want a cheap, small flat for yourself you'll likely have to live in a shabby neighborhood far from the city center.

Come august, there'll be loads of room and apartment ads here on GoKunming, so finding a place won't be difficult, but most of the rooms/flats on this site are very expensive for what you get; a room in central Kunming really don't need to cost more than 6-800 yuan per month. So be careful with what you chose; it might be better to go here first (cheap hostels and dirt cheap shabby hotels are very easy to find) and then look for a room/an apartment.

Makye Ame is not cheap, sure, but certainly not very expensive either. If you avoid the few most expensive dishes, a dinner in Makye Ame'll end up around 60-70 yuan per person, and much less if you don't eat meat. Not that bad for something tagged as 'fine dining'.

Makye Ame's yak meat in nepali spices is the single best dish I've ever had in Kunming, even after more than a year of actively exploring the restaurant scene. It's an absolute must, even now that the yaks in northern Yunnan are sick and eating yak meat might be risky.

Me and my friends need a couple of CHEAP tents for a mountain trip next week. Does anybody know where such tents could be lent, bought or rented? We will pass by Dali and Gaoshan in Nujiang on the way to our destination, so it would be possible to pick up tents in any of those places, + Kunming.

The tents would, of course, need to be water repellant, as we're going to hardcore mountains in northern Yunnan.

Thankful for any advice!