Home » China » China Postcard 5 - Follow the Yangzi Home

Let's Call it Shangri-La
I was confused. I had bought an airline ticket from Lhasa to a city called Zhongdian but as I stepped off the plane onto the rainy tarmac, the sign over the terminal building clearly read Shangri-La. Well it seems that the Chinese government has decreed that Zhongdian is the real-life paradise that inspired the famous novel. It is no problem at all that there is little convincing evidence for this - if the government says its so, no one here is going to question it. A bigger problem is that Zhongdian looks much more like another dirty Chinese city than an idyllic utopia. I did read that there is an interesting if not beautiful old city district complete with mud-brick houses and roaming pigs. Not any more! The old city is a construction site. The old houses are being leveled and replaced by quaint fake-old wooden buildings, all in the new approved Shangri-La style. It reminds me of an Intra-West ski village.

China Postcard 5 - Follow the Yangzi Home

Mark Morin
2006-04-29 14:13:58

Displayed times (last time: )

Let's Call it Shangri-La
I was confused. I had bought an airline ticket from Lhasa to a city called Zhongdian but as I stepped off the plane onto the rainy tarmac, the sign over the terminal building clearly read Shangri-La. Well it seems that the Chinese government has decreed that Zhongdian is the real-life paradise that inspired the famous novel. It is no problem at all that there is little convincing evidence for this - if the government says its so, no one here is going to question it. A bigger problem is that Zhongdian looks much more like another dirty Chinese city than an idyllic utopia. I did read that there is an interesting if not beautiful old city district complete with mud-brick houses and roaming pigs. Not any more! The old city is a construction site. The old houses are being leveled and replaced by quaint fake-old wooden buildings, all in the new approved Shangri-La style. It reminds me of an Intra-West ski village.

Zhongdian's other claim to fame is its large Tibetan minority. That's because this used to be part if Tibet. What China calls the Autonomous Region of Tibet is only a fraction of what was the country of
Tibetan Buddhist monestary in Zhondian
Tibet. The most populous and productive parts were carved off and annexed to neighbouring Chinese provinces like Yunnan. I went to see the large Tibetan Monastery here, which resembles the ones I saw in Tibet except that there are no pilgrims praying, only tourists and the monks seem more preoccupied chatting by text-message on their cell phones than meditating. My Tibetan greetings of "tashidalek" (hello) to some of the older residents were received with great surprise and laughter.

Tiger Leaping Gorge
One of my objectives here was to organize a trek along the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge but the non-stop rain was making me question whether I wanted to undertake it alone and I didn't see any other westerners at all in Zhongdian. Then, the morning ...