Well many suggestions are really wonderful, but I always relied on Lonely Planet's Book on China,when I traveled Shilin in 2009-10
This book is worth buying if you wish to travel many places in China, where many intricate details are given & are updated time to time.

Harriis: Lonely Planet is ok for practical details (finding a guesthouse, etc.), but if you want to know more intricate details and observations, and more accurate ones, about Yunnan you should get hold of Jim Goodman's: YUNNAN: SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS, as well as his several other books about Yunnan, available at Mandarin Books on Wenhuaxinag in Kunming.

Ahhh... Lonely Planet.... The white people's guide to knowing where to find white privilege in non-white countries...

***can also be bought and used by people of any other ethnicity***

The directions are still the same. Make sure you leave very early or arrive the day prior and stay overnight, this way you can get an early start the next morning.

This is not a good time for Shi Lin because of the rain. Go to the Black Stone Forest to avoid the crowds.

Thanks all for the info...

though, to be fair Yankee, I was looking through my LP the other day and it said about a place frequented by Russian shoppers 'unless you look Asian, shop and restaurant staff will speak to you in Russian' and I thought to myself what if you don't look asian or white? will they still speak to you in Russian? Maybe they would if its the only foreign language they know.. but there aren't a lot of black Russians as far as I know.

LP the hipster guide to experience other peoples adventures and claim them for your own.

HFCAMPO really should write a book about yunnan travels.

Its one thing to write a guide to a province, it's quite another to compile a guide for the whole of China. That's a lot of travel, and a lot of research. LP China can't be very thorough (at least in a physical format), or it would be thousands of pages long.

Maybe the thieves are reading the Lonely Planet too. In South East Asia you meet these backpackers who have abundant of rip off's, backpacks stolen and what not else - they are the ones that walk around with a Lonely Planet. Fair enough, they are so occupied not being ripped off, that its in any self respecting locals interest to make sure to rip them off - in one way or another.