There are a lot of places calling themselves "Shangri-la" these days, including a village in Guangxi near the tourist hotspot Yangshuo, a national park in SW Sichuan province, a city in Yunnan province which this post is about, and probably several other places. The name is a little misleading - there is no real, original "Shangri-la". It was originally coined by James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizon, to describe a fictitious Utopian Asian wonderland. The name sounds instantly exotic and exciting, so that's how we've ended up with numerous tourist destinations dubbing themselves "Shangri-la". The city in Yunnan which I visited was formerly Zhongdian County, although its original Tibetan name was Gyalthang or Gyaitang which means Royal Plains (thank you Wikipedia).
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| A quick stop on the bus ride up to Shangri-la from Tiger Leaping Gorge; the scenery was incredible! |
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| Gate leading into the main touristy part of Shangri-la |
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| One of the big city squares |
The city is culturally Tibetan, which is its main draw for tourists. There are a number of temples, a large monastery, Tibetan food and souvenirs for sale, and Tibetan Buddhist monks wandering the streets asking tourists for donations. Like a lot of Chinese cities that have been developed to promote tourism, there's a kind of Disneyland feeling to the the buildings, everything is on theme and looks recently built - although part of the reason for that may be the fire that destroyed large parts of the city in 2014. The temples are really interesting and definitely worth seeing, and they were fortunately not damaged by the fire. There is a huge prayer wheel that looks amazing when it's lit up at night, although good luck getting anywhere near it with all the people trying to take selfies around it.
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| Uyghur women making meat pies - they were delicious! |
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| A stuffed Tibetan mastiff |
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| The temples lit up at night |
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| A prayer wheel |
In the town square in the evening, around 7pm, the local people gather to do traditional dancing. This seems to be common in most Tibetan towns. It was really fun to see the older generation teaching the younger one the steps, and there were quite a few tourists jumping in to try it as well.
We had some Tibetan food for dinner, which ended up being fried pieces of tofu with vegetables, yak butter tea, and something called bread which was actually more of a thick brown paste that you dip into a spicy tomato based sauce. I wasn't a huge fan of the bread, although the sauce was tasty. The yak butter tea was in fact pretty buttery in flavor and bright yellow, and I thought it tasted pretty good.
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| "Bread" with spicy red sauce |
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| Fried tofu and green peppers |
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| Yak butter tea |
We only spent half a day in Shangri-la on our way further north to the Daocheng Yading national park in Sichuan province. I've heard that there are some interesting hikes in the area, so it could be worth spending a little more time in Shangri-la, but one day is probably enough to see the sights in town.
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