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Published: September 7th 2007
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Many different locations have been suggested for the site of James Hilton's fictitious Shangrila - somewhere in the mountainous tangle of the Himalayas and Kunlun Mountains. The Chinese government are promoting the area of Zhongdian in the extreme north of Yunnan province as their candidate. Zhongdian is the capital of the Dechen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and close by is the spectacular Ganden Sumsanling Monastery, sometimes called the Songzanlin Lamasery, built by the 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century.
This was once referred to as the summer palace of the Dalai Lama and certainly looks like the Potala Palace in Lhasa. It is the home of 800 monks today, many of them very young boys. There are massive renovation and reconstruction works in progress ( Summer 2007) and the entrance is a sea of mud but worth navigating because the lamasery is very impressive.
After paying our admission to a monk multitasking with his cellphone we tackled the steps leading up to the main buildings. The high altitude hit me at this point and I had to rest and take my puffer several times. There are a series of small temples along the way up and these showed
us prayer wheels, monks at prayer and the great decorations and bright, rather scary,mural stories from their scriptures. Crossing one of the upper level courtyards we heard "Hello" from the rooftop and looked up to a young monk beckoning us up. Finding some stairs we climbed up to find a work-party of about twenty teenage monks tamping a thick layer of earth to make a new roof. They were supposedly controlled by an older one who was armed with a feeble little branch to swat at them with. When he "disciplined" one another would call out a taunt from somewhere else and he would rush off to quell the new disturbance. The youngsters were having a great time!!
At the highest level the temple halls are the largest and we saw the monks blowing the enormous five metre horns to call the monks to chapel time for prayer and meditation - which visitors can watch. The horns were so long that they extended across the inner room and out of the widows. The older monks sit at the inner rows and the youngsters behind. There was quite a contrast between the piety of the older monks and the playful
nature of the young ones, fidgeting,giggling, playing cat's cradle and teasing one another behind
the backs of their elders.
Our hotel was not in the town but actually attached to the outer walls of the monastery so we took the #3 bus to town. The new part is not very interesting so we headed right for the Old Town. Here there was some interesting architecture with beautiful carved wooden shutters, even in the new restoration buildings. We spent an hour watching a building site using methods right out of the Middle Ages. The building frame was precut wooden beams, notched and with carvings on the end. These were fitted together like a giant child's construction set and hoisted into position by a large crew armed with long push poles and ropes, with the foreman calling the cadence - one, two, three, push !! As soon as the frame section reached a rather wobbly vertical a man swarmed up each end and the cross pieces to lock the section into place with the previous section were hauled up to them and the whole unit was joined in the precut notches, with the aid of blows from huge wooden mauls (medieval
mallets). It was hard physical work and they took frequent but short breaks. They seemed flattered that we found their work so interesting and shared everything they had with us - tea, watermelon, cake etc.
Most of the Old Town is being fixed up for the growing domestic tourist trade. A huge square sits in the lower end, rising up to a temple with a giant prayer wheel the size of a farm silo (which can be turned by an encircling rail). The rest is a maze of tourist shops, all selling the same Tibetan handicrafts. Jewellery, souvenir prayer wheels, leatherwork,
real and fake snow leopard hides etc. Here and there you see hostels tucked away, offering rooms at $4 to 10 per night to backpackers - the high end boast western style toilets - and all of them offer Internet access. They reflect the fact that the old backpacking destination of Zhongdian is being converted to the new destination of ShangriLa.
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Sue Bennett
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Thankyou for your great blog - I will be going to many of these areas in about a month and it has been great seeing and reading about your experiences. A great blog.