It might be as much a state of mind as a place, but the Chinese government has decided where Shangri-La really is, writes Clifford Coonan
Anyone visiting Shangri-La, a mythical place of enlightenment in the eastern Himalayas, is destined to forget how they got there and will never find it again. It's an unattainable paradise, created thousands of years ago by Tibetan monks who sought tranquility in the remote parts of what is today Yunnan province in China.
A state of mind as much as it is a place, many places in this part of the world claim to be the real Shangri-La and explorers have long sought it out, combing the region to find clues to the whereabouts of what Tibetan scriptures call Shambhala.
However, the more prosaic demands of development in modern-day China have entered this mystical realm and things are changing in paradise.
The Chinese government, keen to build on the tourism potential of the legendary destination, has officially declared the town of Zhongdian as Shangri-La and is pumping millions of dollars into a huge development programme. Now Shangri-La is officially located in Yunnan, a huge province bigger than Germany which stretches from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas and to the tropical jungles on the borders with Burma, Laos and Vietnam. The government has built an airport and more than one million visitors come here every year.
It's always been a place with many names. Originally called Diqing in Chinese, then Zhongdian, a name inspired by the Tibetan Gyalthang. And now it's officially Xiangelila, the Chinese rendering of Shangri-La. No wonder travellers have had such a job trying to find it over the centuries.
Its reputation in the West began in the 1930s when it was the fantasy kingdom of English writer James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon.
NEWLY CHRISTENED SHANGRI-LA is a frontier town - dusty, not pretty, with huge construction projects lining its main drag. The new buildings are modern, parodies of local architectural styles, with monstrous Tibetan details superimposed onto Las Vegas-scale hotels. Shangri-La's bars and cafes have been geared towards Western backpackers for a couple of years now, and have names like the Yak Bar, the Raven or the Treehouse. The anorak-clad waitresses are friendly, serving yak steaks and yak butter tea - an acquired taste.
Increasingly the clientele is Chinese, arriving in tour buses, and the menu is offering more and more staples to suit their tastes. For the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China, Tibetans are a mystical people and Shangri-La is a hip destination for the new rich of Shanghai, Guangdong and Beijing to find their spiritual selves. Growing wealth in China has given more people than ever the chance to travel.
Just outside the town, a raised area of land is a prime vantage point to view the Gadan Song Zan Lin monastery, and has been colonised by local business people who charge for the view.
One of these entrepreneurs is a tall Tibetan cowboy, with long-flowing hair and a dagger on his hip. He's a walking photo opportunity, offering Chinese tourists the chance to sit astride a yak surrounded by young women in traditional costume, while he yodels a local song. A rather glum-looking gent has mounted the yak and is sitting there while his family takes photos. The cowboy, or yakboy, tries to block our photographer from taking a picture, saying we have to pay. He grasps the handle of his knife meaningfully.
Our guide, who comes from Lhasa but spends six months of each year in Shangri-La, sneers in his direction. "I hate these people. He's Naxi - he's not even Tibetan," he sniffs. The Tibetans and the Naxi minority have a decidedly frosty relationship, though their warring days are long over.
We drive away from this weird tableau and take in a stunning backdrop of the eastern Himalayas, snow-capped and dotted with white stones spelling out messages of peace from Tibetan scripture.
The monastery is at 3,200 metres and the air is thin. Climbing scores of steps to the shrine is a lot more arduous than it appears. At the top, a 400-year-old temple is crowded with tourists and pilgrims spinning prayer wheels and the air is heavy with incense. Red-robed monks wander the halls, looking slightly bemused but glad the visitors are here.
IT'S HERE THAT you start to get a feeling for the real magic of Shangri-La. It's on the road leading up to the town, and the road heading out into the vast Tibetan countryside. Shangri-La is a staggering 1,800 kilometres from Lhasa, capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, an arduous week-long drive in a Land Cruiser or, nowadays, a convenient flight away and soon reachable by a state-of-the-art railway.
Education is a major element for sustainable tourism in the area. In the East Tibetan Languages Institute (ETLI) in town, 16- to 20-year-olds from the area are learning English, with Australian funding. The class is a cross-section of the nationalities that live there - Naxi, Tibetan, Yi, Muslim and Han Chinese - but they share a phenomenal enthusiasm for study. The students have six months of free tuition and they use every minute to pick up English words.
He Gang has taken the English name Tom. "My family didn't have enough money to send me to school, but here at the ETLI, everything is free. I'll work very hard, because I want to speak English and do something with it, like be a guide," he says. "My parents are farmers. Everyone plants food but no-one has any money in our home town," says Tom.
Xia Hongxing says you need English to get an interesting job. "Otherwise I'd get a job in a hotel, in the services sector. I want to work in computers. My forefathers have lived in my village for generations but there's no work in my village and I want a foothold in the city. People should always look for a higher place," he says.
Linda is from nearby Sanba and had to give way to her brother when it came to choosing which child went to school, common practice in rural China.
"I was very sad that my parents didn't send me to school, but I'm very happy to be here," she says. It would be hard to find a happier, more enthusiastic group of students. In an essay shown to me by her teacher, Linda writes in English about a school outing. "We went to Daxin to play football and ate a lot. That day we were very full. The food was very delicious," she says.
It's not just the towns where things are changing. Two hours' drive from Shangri-La, deep in the heart of the countryside, farmers are trying to shift from scrabbling a living on the land to reeling in tourist yuan.
And what a drive it is. The fields off the road are lined with brightly coloured, open-fronted houses, with large pillars and gorgeously painted eaves bearing swastikas, ancient Tibetan symbols of peace. Outside the houses, yak heads and skins are displayed on frames, while grass for feeding the shaggy beasts during the winter is left to dry in the sun on huge wooden stands.
This area is home to the Yi people, and the women wear stunning traditional headwear of a square of black material secured with colourful scarves. In the courtyard outside the factory the children play with their mothers - Yi women practice "walk-in" marriages, where they choose men to father the children - China's single-child policy does not apply to ethnic minorities - but do not live with them, with uncles taking on the paternal role. In this matriarchy, women do all the work and run the villages. The men basically plant the fields and carry things.
And run factories. Shen Wenzhong is the manager of a factory in which they are trying to revive an ancient craft of making wooden lacquered bowls, which died out during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, when many traditional handicrafts were forbidden in a spirit of destructive Communist zeal.
The showroom is lined with black bowls, ladles and dishes, painted in a distinctive red colour. Each item is painted nine times by two women, while the men do the cutting and turn the bowls on lathes.
"We started to make them again last year but the tradition had been lost because the old people who knew the skill had all died. But we relearned it from some Yi people living in Sichuan," says Shen. "The only crop we have here is potato. Otherwise people might sell chickens or sheep, but many leave to become migrant workers in the cities," he says.
WE ENTER A wooden hut with a clay floor and sit on tiny stools around a fire, with smoke curling through a hole in the roof. The inevitable cigarettes and baijiu, Chinese liquor, are offered around. The householder points at the grate, saying this is his second house this year, the last one burned down. He's hopeful that tourism takes off in the region, as there is little alternative for his family.
"Five years ago we'd get 30 or 40 cars a day passing by here, but now it's at least 100. The number of tourists is increasing," says Shen.
Leaving Shangri-La we enter what at seems like a foggy section of road, but soon we come to a huge road-making plant, spewing out smoke as freshly cut trees are burned to make tar and a giant cement plant produces more pollution.
Trouble in paradise. The roads are of high quality but the downside is this kind of pollution, something you see all over China, and the biggest challenge facing the authorities - how to balance the need for more tourism with the need to keep the area beautiful. You hope the desire to keep Shangri-La as an earthly paradise can be reconciled with the need for speedy development. And that Shangri-La keeps its mystery. Like so many travellers over the centuries, I've forgotten how to get there, but I hope to find Shangri-La again one day.