The location of Shangri-La
For more than 60 years deabte has raged about the "real" location of the imaginary utopia of Shangri-La. The earthly paradise in the shadow of the Himalayas was dreamed up by the author James Hilton in 1933 at his home in East London. That has not deterred researchers, explorers and more recently Chinese government officials from trying to pinpoint the exact location on the Chinese-Tibetan border which served as his inspiration.
Last week, the Chinese announced they had found it. They unveiled a £6 billion scheme to develop a remote, mountainous area straddling Tibet, Yunnan and Sichuan as a massive Shangri-La tourist attraction.
But according to American lawyer, Ted Vaill, who has spent 20 years investigating Hilton's sources, they are putting the new airports and hotels in the wrong place.
Instead of being, as the Chinese suggest, near Zhongdian, it is 200 miles away on the extreme south-eastern boundary of the region. Mr Vaill believes that the ancient kingdom of Muli, an area the size of Wales between Doacheng, Zhongdian and Jiulong, is the real Shangri-La.
However he is delighted that the bulldozers and cement mixers are going to the wrong place, for Muli is one of the very few places in China not trying to be identified as the legendary paradise.
"The people who live there are very happy with their lives," said Mr Vaill yesterday. "The only tourists who visit there are Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims. Let other counties build their airports and hotels but leave these people in peace. There is no question in my mind that this is the place that inspired Hilton."
Mr Viall's imagination was sparked 20 years ago when he met a fellow lawyer and mountaineer, Peter Kilka, who was intrigued by articles he found in some old National Geographic magazines in a dusty old bookshop dating from the 1920s and 30s, recording the exploits of the Austrian-American botanist Joseph F Rock, mainly in Sichuan province that was then part of Tibet. But one particular part of Sichuan excited Mr Vaill and Mr Klika's attention: a long forgotten mountain kingdom that used to be an autonomous region under the control of an independant monarch. Mr Vaill concluded this tiny region was the model for James Hilton's Shangri-La. The two lawyers launched an expedition in 1989 to Tibet and the lost kingdom. What they discovered was a tiny area, so mountainous and so hidden that their journey took four days by jeep and then horseback and finally 10 days on foot. At the end they discovered "a magical place" with a lush, verdant valley, a monastary and a village. He and Klika identified 22 points of similarity between the site and Hilton's Shangri-La. Mr Vaill even came across a community of people who claim to be more than 100 years old - including one man who claims to be 152. Perhaps Shangri-La really does have the secret of eternal youth.
Extract from article in the Daily Telegraph, 29th of July. Written by Timothy Carroll who is currently writing a biography of James Hilton.
The road to Shangri-La - According to Tibetan Buddhist teachings, paradise exists in the shape of Shambhala, a lost kingdom somewhere in central Asia. Armed with directions gleaned from ancient texts and Google Earth, Patrick Symmes embarked on a quest to find it. - 12/15/07
