@Ocean
OK I know that horse and wagon are not the fastest mode of transport, but going to town and returning a decade later is exaggeration ;-)
Or you had a very good time in town and hated the teachers college.

That's why he is wearing sunglasses.

Ishmael
Sounds like a Biblical prophet.

Indeed tripling passengers to 120,000,000 is quite a lot and is more than the largest airport anywhere in the world at this moment. As a hub Kunming is not very suitable either at this moment because of the high fuel prices compared to airports nearer to refineries but when the oil pipeline from Myanmar comes up to steam this might change.

Part of the growth of passenger volumes could be explained by the trend that more and more people nowadays fly and instead of having one longer holiday there is a tendency for more frequent shorter holidays.
A relative working in outbound tourism here is quite busy with flights out of Changshui to tourist destinations which include now as well Sri Lanka. Apparently there are quite some charters now as well going to Siem Reap in Cambodia and Nepal. So part of the growth is not inbound tourism but outbound tourism.
The other trend I see now is that on major routes like Beijing and Shanghai wide body aircrafts are used instead of the single isles ones used before. These require some 3000 metres of runway so cannot land on any of the other airports here in Yunnan.
The Chinese airspace is congested but they are working on modernising the air route system.
Kunming itself might not have too much to offer but one of the largest tourist attractions in Yunnan, that is the Stone Forest, depends on Changshui airport.

Changshui already has two full size runways with a length of 4000 and 4500 metres thus can handle the largest airplanes in the world. Now Changshui is mainly handling single aisle planes (Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 types) which require at this altitude a runway of 2150 metres. So most likely they will add some shorter runways.