四海为家

Our last stop in Yunnan was a town that until nine years ago was known as Zhongdian (中甸), now called Shangri-La (transliterated into Chinese as 香格里拉), and is an excellent (if extreme) example of the touristification of Yunnan. In the 90s, other towns in Yunnan, like Dali and Lijiang, were beginning to bring in big money through tourism, and officials in Zhongdian hoped that the same method might bring development to this remote region in the northwestern Yunnan. Money was poured into infrastructure development, including roads and an airport (some of the money reportedly diverted from earthquake relief money that was sent from the central government following a major earthquake in the late 90s).

The region is essentially Tibetan, both in terms of culture and in terms of the terrain (Shangri-La is at 3200m, compared to Lhasa at only slightly higher 3490m — for anyone going there, the altitude is not to be underestimated), and given the travel restrictions around travelling to Tibet for foreigners, travelling to this part of Yunnan provides a slightly more accessible way to see a slice of Tibet. The beautiful natural environment is also a draw (from what I could gather from an old Lonely Planet guidebook from the late 90s that we found in a cafe in Shangri-La, the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek has been popular for quite some time). So everything was in place for a tourist boom.

Chörten near the Ganden Sumtseling Gompa

But what really made a difference was the name change, from Zhongdian to Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a fictional place from the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, a place described as an earthly utopia (the Shangri-La hotel chain chose the name to evoke the serenity and calm described in the book). Tourist officials noticed that some of the geography around Zhongdian matches descriptions in the book, and claimed that Zhongdian was in fact the real Shangri-La. According to Lonely Planet, a villager in a rival town also claiming to be the “real” Shangri-La was even told that she was a blood relative of one of the fictional characters in the book. And so in 2001, the town was renamed. When we were there, the name Shangri-La seemed to be more or less universally used — it was the only name on buses to the town and signs in the town, and we met several people when we were travelling who told us they were from Shangri-La, rather than from Zhongdian.

It’s clear that the city is in the middle of a process of touristification — the old town has been preserved and marked off for tourists, and there are hostels and backpackers cafes with coffee and pizza. It’s still (thankfully) no where near as developed or as polished as Lijiang, but it’s probably headed in that direction. It’s hard to tell how much of the growth of tourism comes from the name change, but my sense is that the name Shangri-La, with all of its exotic connotations, has been very important.

It always feels a bit sad to see a place turned into a tourist trap, but then again, given the options, touristification is probably a pretty good way to go — it creates incentives to keep the air and ground clean, and this way at least a little bit of traditional culture might be preserved while still freeing as much of the population as possible from the poverty and back-breaking work in sustenance farming that they’re stuck with at the moment. And given that the type of Western tourists who are likely to travel to Shangri-La will mostly be backpackers who like to eat at cheap restaurants and stay in family guest houses, at least some of the money is likely to go to the people who need it the most. Either way, interesting to see such an obvious and calculated case of touristification in practice.

Ganden Sumtseling Gompa