Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the novel, Lost Horizon, written by British writer James Hilton in 1933. In it, “Shangri-La” is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Himalaya. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia 鈥?a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. The word also evokes the imagery of exoticism of the Orient. The story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in the Buddhist religion.
Several possible places in the Buddhist Himalaya between north India and Tibet have been suggested as the actual basis for Hilton’s legend. In China, Tao Qian of the Jin Dynasty described a Shangri-La in his work Story of the Peach Blossom Valley . The legendary Kun Lun Mountains in Tibet offer other possible Shangri-La valleys. There are also a number of modern Shangri-La pseudo-legends that have developed since 1933 in the wake of the novel and the film made from it. The Nazis had an enthusiasm for Shangri-La,too, where they hoped to find an ancient master race in a remote area similar to the Nordic race “unspoiled” by Buddhism. They sent 7 expeditions to Tibet, the most famous one led by Ernst Sch盲fer in 1938. The experience of Austrian SS member Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter in Tibet are now best known through the biography and film Seven Years in Tibet.
In the beginning of World War II against Japan, the United States flew most of its bombers from mainland China. In propaganda, they claimed that they started them from Shangri-La. Later, one of the aircraft carriers used in the Pacific ocean was named USS Shangri-La. Ojai, California is said to have been the setting for Shangri-La in the 1937 film Lost Horizon.
Today, various places claim the title, such as parts of southern Kham in northwestern Yunnan province, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian. Places like Sichuan and Tibet also claim the real Shangri-la was in its territory. In 2001, Tibet Autonomous Region put forward a proposal that the three regions optimise all Shangri-la tourism resources and promote them as one. After failed attempts to establish a China Shangri-la Ecological Tourism Zone in 2002 and 2003, government representatives of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and Tibet Autonomous Region signed a declaration of cooperation in 2004. Also in 2003, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County.
Bhutan which was till now isolated from outside world and with its unique form of Tibetan Buddhism has been hailed as the last Shangri-La.
