Lost Horizon - Shangri-La

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Yunnan, just by name it could inspire so many questions... Always seems to have a veil of mystery, the most mysterious of all is of course famous Shangri-La, which was originally called Di qi, but changed to Shangri-La for the famous book &moive "Lost Horizon" - James Hilton.

I have to say the world has been giving too much credit to the name "Shangri-La", which misleads many people to have very high expectation about the place Shangri-La. I am one of them. Before I went there, every mentioning of Shangri-La made me feel it's a place like "heaven", huge grass land with yaks everywhere, having lake-blue sky and snow-capped mountains as backgroud, local people dressing in their traditional Tibetan style clothes, milking the yaks, making barley wine and dancing around the fire at night. Somewhere hidden in those mignificant mountains, monasteries with glistering goldden tops, which you can catch a glimpse from the remote villages at mountain foot. Pilgrims, sharing deep faith in Buddism, go all the way up to the monastery hidden in the mountain in the hope of accumulating their merits or praying for a better rebirth. I had these images about Shangri-La sculpted in my head before going there. After i arrived, it's likely that either I allowed myself to have a wrong impression and completely misunderstand the books I have read about Shangri-La, or Shangri-La itself couldn't live up to the expectation.

I couldn't find much of traces of its history, its old Tibetan style homes, or people in its traditional clothes. Most of all I have seen about Shangri-La only made me feel that it's just another modernized (or shall we say "economically reformed") city with most of its culture and history erased or submerged by C immigration. All those images in my head, like a mirror, have been broken into pieces the moment I landed.

The center of the Shangri-La city is the Shangri-La Dukezong old city, where I was overwhelmed by the commercial touch everywhere I saw. The streets were flourished with shops selling furs, souvenirs, yunan knittings, bars without loud musics and western cafes and restaurants, and among all these, a monastory is sitting quietly on a small hill for some people to pray, and for some people to merely visit and photograph (even they have been told that photographing is strictly prohibitted).

Even though i was quite annoyingly disappointed the commercial develipment of Shangri-La, I still tried my best to explore and dig up some originality of Shangri-La. I went to Songzanlin Monastery, the so-called small "Potala Palace", astonished by its history, architecture and cultures and legends. I found the Lama/monk culture quite facinating, especially D Lama's reincarnation and discovery of it. This becomes the only thing which could grasp my attention and the only thing left in Shangri-La in the dangerous verge of being commercialized.

Shangri-La, after seeing it myself, is now more like a "lost" city. I can't help but wonder whether I would suffer the same disappointment and shock when I travel to Tibet.

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