In 1933 the British novelist James Hilton introduced the word Shangri-La to an increasingly pessimistic world where Western civilization appeared to be on a course for self-destruction. His story ‘The Lost Horizon’, tells of four Westerners stranded in a remote mountain region following a plane crash. The vision of ‘Shangri-La’, an earthly paradise located somewhere in the unchartered territory of Tibet, captivated the imagination of an era.
Hilton, who never visited China, drew inspiration from the botanist Joseph Rock’s numerous National Geographic articles from the 1920s and 30s. It was only a matter of time before the search for this “magical place”, under the shadow of Mount Karakal would begin. Classical Chinese texts describe a Buddhist Western Paradise where immortals reside in the fabled Kunlun Mountains. Some pointed to Lijiang, which was Rock’s home for 27 years. However in 1997 the Yunnan authorities laid previous ‘false’ claims to rest. The real Shangri-La was exposed with “certainty”, about sixty miles north of Lijiang, on the Diqing Plateau and in 2002 the capital of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture was finally bestowed with its rightful name of Shangri-La County.