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Shangri-La
It was supposed to be a mythical paradise. Now some
mountaineers claim to have actually found it
By Melinda Liu
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
March 26, 2001 issue — Shangri-La. Just say the word, and it conjures visions of a snowcapped paradise. As a geographic place, Shangri-La never actually existed; it was the setting of James Hilton’s 1933 fictional bestseller "Lost Horizon," which was made into an Oscar-winning movie. The film fixed Shangri-La in the Western imagination as a magical place whose denizens lived for centuries—immersed in classical music and back issues of The Times of London—at a secret Tibetan monastery run by a Roman Catholic priest. Writing at a time when war was about to erupt in Asia and Europe, "Hilton tapped into a vision of Tibet as a place where all fantasies could be found," says Donald Lopez, author of "Prisoners of Shangri-La." "The Chinese communist advance into Tibet [in the 1950s] then triggered a sense of loss for a onetime utopia."
IN FACT, Hilton never went near Tibet. He gathered inspiration for his book partly from articles written by an eccentric American botanist named Joseph Rock, who lived in the Tibetan province of Kham from 1922 to 1949 and served as National Geographic’s "man in China." Rock spent his tour tramping across Kham with dozens of followers and a collapsible bathtub. Since then, people from all over the world have attempted to retrace his wanderings in an effort to find Tibet’s lost paradise. Now an American expedition, led by mountaineers Peter Klika and Ted Vaill, claims to have found the "real" Shangri-La while traveling in Kham a year ago. "We have identified 22 elements of proof that Hilton’s Shangri-La and the place we located are one and the same," declares Vaill, who is helping to make a documentary film about the expedition. The stakes couldn’t be higher locals have been locked in competition over tourist dollars—and rival Shangri-La claims—for years.
What are the telltale signs? The region around Vaill’s Shangri-La valley, located in Sichuan province, features a rarefied atmosphere, a striking 6,000-meter "holy" mountain ("magnificent in the full shimmer of moonlight," as the book puts it) and neglected congregations of Tibetan Catholics whose ancestors were converted by 19th-century European missionaries. According to Vaill, it is home to a particular town, also mentioned in the novel, that is renowned for its Tibetan tea. As the last of Tibet’s three ancient provinces to open its doors to tourism, Kham is still largely wild and unspoiled, a place where wolves and antelope (and bandits) roam. "Kham is much more remote than central Tibet," says Vaill. "Because it’s so hard to get to, the Shangri-La valley we found has a purer form of Tibetan culture."
GREATER TOLERANCE
That’s in large part because "government rules with a lighter touch there," Vaill says. Reports of religious crackdowns originate largely from central Tibet, now called the Tibet Autonomous Region, with its capital in Lhasa. But more than 50 percent of Tibetans live outside the TAR, in Kham (mostly in today’s Sichuan and Yunnan provinces) and Amdo (in Qinghai province). Authorities there appear more tolerant, allowing many photographs of the Dalai Lama to be displayed, for instance, while Lhasa officials have banned images of the exiled Tibetan leader. Religious activity is also less likely to be restricted there though the government limits the number of monks officially registered in each monastery, some in Kham allow thousands more than their "quota." Says John Ackerly of Washington’s International Campaign for Tibet "The atmosphere of Chinese occupation, and the colonial mentality, is less evident in Kham."
Still, few Tibetans are more wary of the Shangri-La myth than the Dalai Lama’s supporters. They worry that its gauzy allure might eclipse the Dalai Lama’s more urgent mission to save the Tibetan language and culture. "Since Shangri-La is a mythical place based on writings of an American anthropologist, we think the ‘supposed’ discovery of Shangri-La in Kham is baseless," says Thubten Samphel, spokesman for the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. "Tibetans do not believe in the existence of a Shangri-La in Tibet."
"Tibetans are real people with real problems." — PAMELA LOGAN
Kham Aid Foundation For many of them, life is hardly idyllic. "Tibetans are real people with real problems," says ex-physicist Pamela Logan, who in 1997 founded an NGO called the Kham Aid Foundation, which has helped finance Khampa students, preserve ancient art and bring medical care to remote communities. Late last year Kham Aid and other NGOs donated more than 200 wheelchairs to disabled Khampas, ranging from polio-stricken Buddhist monks to a pale 25-year-old paraplegic who had spent his entire life in bed.Wheeled outside into the sun, he burst into smiles—and his grateful mother burst into tears.
Many Khampas are grappling with the onslaught of modernization. On the dusty streets of a town called Daofu, young monks in maroon robes sit astride shiny motorcycles with religious symbols pasted on the windshields. Chinese Canto-pop music warbles from giant speakers set up in CD shops. Languid Han Chinese "hostesses" apply makeup in squalid karaoke parlors. Upscale Tibetan families proudly use electric juice blenders—instead of traditional wooden butter churns—to prepare yak-butter tea for visitors. Even in the hinterland, nomads set up solar-energy panels next to their yak-hair tents on the 4,700-meter plateau.
A UTOPIAN WONDERLAND?
And yet the image of Tibet as a utopian wonderland untouched by materialism persists. Vaill and Klika first became intrigued with the region while mountain climbing there in 1983; later their discussions led Vaill to link it to "Lost Horizon," one of the entertainment lawyer’s favorite films. In a dangerous September 1999 journey they traveled for four days over mountain passes between 15,500 and 16,500 feet high. "If you get caught between those passes without proper equipment, you’ll die," says Vaill. They intend to keep the precise location of their Shangri-La secret, "because we don’t want the Chinese to ruin it" through uncontrolled tourism, says Vaill. He has reason to worry; local Khampas have known its general location all along—around the Sichuan area of Daocheng—and are planning their own tourist drive. Vaill intends to return this year to finish filming an hour-long documentary titled "Finding the Real Shangri-La," which Thomas Horton Associates has agreed to produce and distribute. They’ve already got 12 hours of footage, including Tibetan pilgrims visiting the Spring of Eternal Life, a proverbial "fountain of youth."
One source they interviewed for the project is former film star Jane Wyatt, now 90, who played the female lead opposite Ronald Colman in Frank Capra’s 1937 film version of "Lost Horizon." According to Vaill, Hilton, who died in 1954, hinted to Wyatt about his inspiration for Shangri-La while he was an adviser on the film. The author revealed that his source material included British archival material, articles by Joseph Rock and other documents. Wyatt’s character, who was not in the book, spiced up the film considerably when she went skinny-dipping in a lotus pool and burbled, "I’m sure there’s a wish for Shangri-La in everyone’s heart ... oh, I wish the whole world would come to this valley."
THE SHANGRI-LA KARAOKE PARLOR
She may get her wish yet. Over the past few years local authorities eager to capitalize on the myth have begun to "discover" Shangri-La all over the place. In 1997 Yunnan officials cited a "panel of Chinese experts" to proclaim that Shangri-La was in their province, near a startling 6,500-meter-tall holy peak called Mount Kagbo. They say the peak, also known as Meili Xueshan, is the model for Hilton’s mythical Mount Karakal. In the Yunnan city of Deqin, just beneath Mount Kagbo, tourists now can hire guides from the Shangri-La tour agency to bring them to the Shangri-La Buddhist association, the Shangri-La wedding-service center and the Shangri-La karaoke parlor.
In another Yunnan village, Cizhong, locals insist their area is the model for Shangri-La, "because there are so many Tibetan Catholics here"—nearly three fourths of the village population, according to a French-speaking Tibetan named Bernard-Marie. A stunning Catholic cathedral completed in 1917 by foreign missionaries dominates the hillside. One local farmer still brews a sickly-sweet red wine, an art he claims his family learned from French priests. Not to be outdone, the Yunnan city of Zhongdian opened the Shangri-La Airport. Zhongdian’s premier tourist hotel sells recently printed copies of "Lost Horizon" for an otherworldly price of $48—complete with a book jacket made to look ratty and well thumbed. Of course, such antics fit right into the outlandish plot of "Lost Horizon," in which four Western airplane passengers crash-land in a snowy Himalayan redoubt and find themselves hosted by a 163-year-old Catholic priest running a Buddhist monastery replete with central heating and European plumbing.
THE ROAD TO SHAMBALA
Just ask Khampas in the region about Shangri-La, and their responses are strikingly similar it’s a mythical utopia conceived by Westerners. For Tibetans, paradise is known as Shambala, and everyone knows it’s imaginary. "Probably Americans heard the word shambala and changed it into Shangri-La," says one middle-aged Khampa who participated in the 1950s anti-Chinese uprising. "As for the place Westerners consider Shangri-La, everyone knows it’s in Daocheng," he says. "I have relatives living there."
With lots of yaks and very few people, Daocheng is snowbound in winter and carpeted in pink and red alpine blooms in summer. Its idyllic nature preserve surrounds the stunning Mount Jambeyang—which even the Shangri-La crowd in neighboring Yunnan province now concedes probably inspired Mount Karakal. The area "is definitely the model for Shangri-La," says prefecture head Atri Pontsok, an ethnic Tibetan. "And our government plans to build the prefecture’s first airport there very soon." Buddhist pilgrims have visited the site for decades, if not centuries, in order to offer prayers as they walk around the holy mountains and the Spring of Eternal Life. Soon the rest of the world will be able to join them. Whether or not it’s Shangri-La, it sure looks a lot like paradise.
With Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi
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