A mystical name! It stands for the searched for hidden paradise on earth, that had already played a roled in antic wisdom and was again dealt with in old buddhist books. For the people from western cultures James Hilton named this phenomenon Shangri-La, with his novel «lost horizon» which he wrote in 1933, taking the name of a simple mountain pass. In the fictive story western passengers of a highjacked plane got stuck in a very isolated place in the himalaya and were welcomed as novizes of the local monastery by the leader. The inhabitants of the monastery were all with western background. They had all turned their backs on the modern hectic materialistic world and had build this oasis. Believing that the apocalypsis was near they understood themselves as the guardians of the human knowledge… A thought that every now and again has fascinated our society. All the thinking, discussing and considering lead to a mystification of the place in the novel. Maybe there is more than just a phantasy behind it… The desire grew to find the location. In all the years Shangri-La remind a code-word for paradise on earth, while the critic on the society got forgotten. Ideologists and tourism-experts searched all the himalaya in order to locate the monastery of the novel. India, Tibet and China all claimed to be home of it. Finally Zhongdian, the small town of tibetan culture in northern Yunnan situated along the road from Kunming to Lhasa was chosen. 2001 it officially was renamed as «The Shangri-La».
The force of the name didn’t stay undetected and since several years big groups of tourists, Chinese as well as Westerners found their way into the region – so did we. In January 2014 most of the old town burned down do to a mistake in an electric installation à la China in a guesthouse. Again typical Chinese the major part of the town has already been reconstructed. Therefore we found a similar situation as in Dali or Lijiang – an infrastructure made for Chinese mass tourism.
Nevertheless we did find our own Shangri-La here. After declining an offer for a dark overpriced room in a guesthouse, Pascale went around the corner to look for alternatives. And sure enough she was soon accompained to a not yet opened Boutique-Hotel and met the young, smart Chinese owner from Beijing. Realising the standard Pascale mentioned our more modest budget. The young lady though quickly said : ok. Her prices though are almost double, but she really likes contact to travelers and after all she hasn’t even opened yet. She agreed and during the next five days we could enjoy a peaceful place with a calmness we had so far not experienced in China – our own Shangri-La.
Additionally we spontanously were invited for breakfast and a dinner with the family and the young Chinese proved her love to travel in nature with a drive around the grassland out of town she invited us to. We drove through a wast flat grassland with scattered tibetan settlements. Yaks, horses, pigs and sheep were freely grazing in the warm evening sun. Mainly elder women in tibetan dresses were tending the animals and now bringing them home. The region was full of peace and calmness – it might well be James Hilton’s «Shangri-La».
