Road to Deqin

Bussing Through Shangrila/Xianggelila/香格里拉 and Deqin/德钦

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January 30th 2011
The ride to Shangrila was pretty ridiculous, especially with Mary occasionally feeding me songs from her eclectic iPod shuffle. I highly recommend taking scenic rides with opera music as background. Shangrila used to be called Zhongdian, but it was renamed after a fictitious place discovered by Joseph Rock in the book Lost Horizon in order to promote the tourism industry. Besides a taxi driver ... read more

Asia » China » Yunnan » Deqin

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For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A... ... read more