| Shangri-La
County is part of Yunnan Province, home of many minority ethnic groups,
particularly Tibetans.
The original name of the county was Zhongdian, but the name
was
changed to Shangri-La County in 2001. It has been speculated that
this was done to attract more tourists, especially Western tourists,
who know the term as a name for an earthly paradise. The term was
coined by a British novelist, James Hilton, whose novel Lost Horizon is largely set in
Shangri-La, a fictional utopian community located high in the
Himalayas. The novel was published in 1933, so the county adopted
the name long after the fact. The county is a good destination for
ethnic tourism, tourism for the purpose of experiencing the cultures of
other ethnic groups. Reading Connection Shangri-La Country is the subject of Ben Hillman's article "Paradise Under Construction: Minorities, Myths and Modernity in Northwest Yunnan." For More Information Shangri-La County - from World66.com Pictures of the county Back to China Back to Main |
 Sumtselin Gompa Monastery, one of the major tourist attractions in the county's capital city. (By WP User:Colegota, License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.1 Spain) |