Shangri-La: Messing with a Myth

Lost Horizon (Hilton) is a captivating novel about a remote idyllic place called Shangri-La, located somewhere in the mountains of Tibet. This fabled place is a wonderland where man and nature coexist in harmony as do several ethnic groups. It is a land of eternally young inhabitants blessed with magnificent landscapes shrouded in mysticism. The fantasy of this mythical place has fueled a search that has yielded many Shangri-Las in the Himalayas, each attempting to fulfill Hilton's vision. Nevertheless, only one of them, the county of Zhongdian in China's Yunnan Province, has been granted the use of Shangri-La brand name by the People's Republic of China (PRC) State Council. In the present study, the researchers find that the reshaping of Zhongdian into the enchanted land of Shangri-La relies upon processes of sacralization, ethnitization, and exoticization. This research explores the construction and marketization of this mythical creation and its cultural, economic, social, and environmental consequences. This analysis also distinguishes the contrasting aims of Han Chinese and Western tourists when traveling to this encapsulated paradise.