Henri: from the square before the Kunming train station (昆明站), walk east along the road that goes in that direction, past a small bus station on a corner on your left. Soon afterwards, again on your left, will be a small bus stop for a K something bus (maybe K5?), hidden beneath a few trees. One of the stops on the sign will read 官渡古镇. Get on this bus; it's an express bus that's rather comfortable and stops just right outside Guandu Old Town. It'll take forever to get there, but eventually the bus'll pass some archaic-looking gatetowers on the west side of an extremely long and straight road; this is where the Guandu Old Town starts, so get off here. (The speakers will hopefully say 'Guandu guzhen', otherwise, ask the driver).

Ximeng is a very nice place, with beautiful scenery and amazing barbequed fish; most of the interesting food is located in stalls just outside the gorgeous but overpriced Longtan park (sneaking in without paying wouldn't be very difficult, though). There is decent restaurants in town as well, but it's true that they're not that special.

However, in the end, I have to say Ximeng isn't really worth your time unless you know locals (with cars) who can take you to the ton of interesting-but-unknown places in the area. There's village festivities, beautiful waterfalls and lakes (for bathing!), Dai buddhist temples, sacrificial grounds, local shamans, musicians and instrument makers, forests with (fake) rock paintings and bisarre and enormous trees, etc, but I would never have found or been able to go to one single of these things without having local friends take me there.

Therefore, I feel that I must actually, and regrettably, discourage people from going to Ximeng, unless you have access to a car and local area knowledge. If you do have these things, however, Ximeng can be amazing, just like many other remote, off-the-beaten-track parts of China.

well, the cool thing is he doesn't seem to do it for monetary gain, so we're imagining some kind of idealist fuck-the-system-guy here ^_^

Whoever he is, he's awesome.

well, the guy might reasonably have been a threat to individuals in China, which makes him no different from the way terrorist are a threat to the US; no terrorist organisation are in any way an even a remotely serious threat to the US as a nation, the only thing they threaten are the lives on individual americans, and that would arguably make this drug lord comparatively dangerous, as he has apparently ordered various large killings and stuff. There is no particularly strong dividing line between terrorists, rebels and large-scale criminal leaders, and one is not necessarily more dangerous to civilians than the other, with terror-like methods being employed even in situations like the drug war raging in Mexico. What I mean by this is that notions like 'drone strikes should be reserved against terrorists' are rather problematic, as there's not always that much separating Al-Qaida from drug cartels, not to mention various insurgencies, whether their cause is perceived as legitimate or not.