Other Yunnan dishes
I'm lumping most of our non-Tibetan Yunnan meals together in this one catch-all page, because I don't want to write 10 separate pages, you don't want to read 10 separate pages, and the most interesting and/or picturesque dishes can be distilled largely to the following.
Cross-bridge noodles

Cross-bridge noodles are another Yunnan specialty. What makes the dish interesting is the backstory, which I am linking to rather than reproducing here, but the gist of which is: a layer of oil on top of your chicken broth will keep things really hot, hot enough to cook thinly-sliced meat. So you're brought a large bowl of piping hot broth (see layer of oil, left), and plates of sliced veggies, meat, and noodles. You throw the meat in first, since it needs to be the hottest, followed by the veggies and the noodles. Stir and eat. It's not all that exciting, but filling, and a good traditional dish with a nice story. It is, however, a little oily.
Coneheads!

These are steamed not-corn buns. You might think they're corn -- everyone at my table did -- but they're not. They're made of xiaomi -- what was described to me as a small yellow grain, not corn, and which turns out to be millet. These are a casual relative of the white steamed buns that you can find at dimsum (or in my case, on the street corner); just bread, basically. I found these to be a bit dry, but I don't know whether that's intrinsic to the dish, or just this incarnation of it. But frankly, I'm an anti-Atkins person, so almost any starch is good.
Appetizers

This was one of my favorite appetizers on the trip -- shredded carrot and mushrooms/fungus wrapped in rice-flour rolls. I loved the ingredients (so fresh and flavorful, and not overcooked) and the textures -- smooth with a slight crunch, and they go sliding down your throat. Yummy.
Hey, wait...

These reminded me of those Lunchable boxes with the round crackers, round pieces of deli meat, and round pieces of cheese. That's actually egg in with the ham, but I thought it was equally unappetizing, in part because it was tremendously salty. In fact, I might pick a Lunchable over this. Too much like Spam for my taste, I think, though not having had Spam in over a decade, it's a little hard to say. We did also have cheese in Yunnan (a rarity in China), though I didn't get a photo of it. It was a goat cheese, I believe, and tasted a bit like feta, but even more crumbly. Not particularly pungent, though, which I (not a stinky-cheese fan) appreciated.
Tiger Paw Black Fungus

At least, I think that was its name. I believe I've already mentioned that Yunnan has fantastic fungi. I love mushrooms and other fungus, so this made me very happy. Black fungus (or wood-ear, as it's sometimes known) is supposed (proven?) to have incredible health properties, such as lowering cholesterol, plus I think it's yummy. The dough for the paw wasn't that great, very dense and not too flavorful, but you have to appreciate the shaping effort.
Hotpot

We ate a LOT of hotpot on this trip. Like, almost every day. Which is fine, because it's a simple, hearty dish, and the ingredients did vary depending on where we were. My favorite was the mushroom hotpot lunch, which featured something like 12 different kinds of mushroom, plus some green veggies, meat, and noodles toward the end (in that case, each ingredient was added separately, and the broth reboiled and served as a different course, as opposed to tossing everything in at once and having one single hotpot course as part of a larger meal). There was only one kind of mushroom that I didn't like, something slightly bitter with a really fat chunky white stalk, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I don't suppose I'll be seeing it at my local market either here or in the US, though, so I'm not fretting.
Before

That's right, do your collective "awwwww" now. I wasn't being sadistic when I took this picture; I just saw the birds hanging out in a cage in front of a building in a big complex and thought, "huh, I wonder why they keep peacocks here...". It wasn't until after we walked into what turned out to be a restaurant that my slight suspicions were confirmed.
After, part 1

Chopped, stirfried peacock (as if you couldn't tell from the presentation), with diced green and red peppers and a smattering of pine nuts. In a light juice, maybe rice wine? It was too salty for my taste -- probably the seasoning, not the meat itself, and yes, it tasted more or less like chicken.
After, part 2

Peacock kebab! Now these, these were really tasty. And I think you have to appreciate anything brought to your table while flaming. These were not overly salty, and very tender. I'm not sure whether peacocks get divided into white/light meat and dark meat, but I don't like white-meat chicken (so dry, so bland, so boring!), and am happy to report that these did not resemble it in the slightest. They were juicy and tender, and lightly seasoned, happy flavors in my mouth. Still, if put to a blind taste test, I'm not sure whether I could correctly distinguish the proud-feathered bird from the lowly chicken.