Shangri-La

Zhongdian in Yunnan

In China, the poet Tao Yuanming of the Jin Dynasty (265–420 CE) described a kind of Shangri-La in his work The Tale of the Peach Blossom Spring (Chinese: 桃花源記; pinyin: Táohuā Yuán Jì). The story goes that there was a fisherman from Wuling, who came across a beautiful peach grove, and he discovered happy and content people who lived completely cut off from the troubles in the outside world since the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE).[4]

Some scholars believe that the Shangri-La story owes a literary debt to Shambhala, a mythical kingdom in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which was sought by Eastern and Western explorers.[5] Shambhala is a core concept in Tibetan Buddhism that describes a realm of harmony between man and nature that is also connected with the Kalachakra or "wheel of time". The Shambhala ideal is described in detail in the Shambhala Sutra, a historical text written by the Sixth Panchen Lama which describes some of the Shambhala locations as being in Ngari, the western prefecture of Tibet.[5][6][7]

Folklore from the Altai Mountains describe Belukha Mountain as a gateway to Shambhala.[8] The Kun Lun Mountains (崑崙山) offer another possible place for valleys like the Shangri-La, since Hilton specifically described the “Kuen-Lun” mountains as its likely location in the book, however, Hilton is not known to have visited or studied the area. Parts of the Kunlun Mountains lie within Ngari, mentioned in the Shambhala Sutra.[5][6][7]

In a New York Times interview in 1936, Hilton states that he used "Tibetan material" from the British Museum, particularly the travelogue of two French priests, Evariste Regis Huc and Joseph Gabet, to provide the Tibetan cultural and Buddhist spiritual inspiration for Shangri-La.[9][10] Huc and Gabet travelled a round trip between Beijing and Lhasa in 1844–1846 on a route more than 250 kilometres (160 mi) north of Yunnan. Their famous travelogue, first published in French in 1850,[11] went through many editions in many languages.[12] A popular "condensed translation" was published in England in 1928,[13].

Today various places, such as parts of southern Kham in northwestern Yunnan province, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian, claim the title. In modern China, Zhongdian county was renamed Xiānggélǐlā (香格里拉, Shangri-La in Chinese) in 2001, to attract tourists.

Hilton visited the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan Kashmir, close to the Chinese border, a few years before Lost Horizon was published; hence it is a popularly believed inspiration for Hilton's physical description of Shangri-La.[14] Being an isolated green valley surrounded by mountains, enclosed on the western end of the Himalayas, it closely matches the description in the novel; also, in an ironic reversal on the story, due to increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, inhabitants of the high-altitude parts of the valley appear to age quickly.

Places like Sichuan and Tibet also lay claim to the real Shangri-La. In 2001, Tibet Autonomous Region put forward a proposal that the three regions optimise all Shangri-La tourism resources and promote them as one. After failed attempts to establish a China Shangri-la Ecological Tourism Zone in 2002 and 2003, government representatives of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and Tibet Autonomous Region signed a declaration of co-operation in 2004. Also in 2001, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County.

American explorers Ted Vaill and Peter Klika visited the Muli area of southern Sichuan Province in 1999, and claimed that the Muli monastery in this remote region was the model for James Hilton's Shangri-La, which they thought Hilton learned about from articles on this area in several National Geographic magazines in the late 1920s and early 1930s written by Austrian-American explorer Joseph Rock.[15] Vaill completed a film based on their research, "Finding Shangri-La", which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. However, Michael McRae unearthed an obscure James Hilton interview from a New York Times gossip column in which he reveals that his cultural inspiration for Shangri-La, if it is any place, is more than 250 km north of Muli on the route travelled by Huc and Gabet.[9][10]

Between 2002–2004 a series of expeditions were led by author and film maker Laurence Brahm in western China which determined that the Shangri-La mythical location in Hilton's book Lost Horizon was based on references to northern Yunnan Province from articles published by National Geographic's first resident explorer Joseph Rock.[6]

On 2 December 2010, OPB televised one of Martin Yan's Hidden China episodes, "Life in Shangri-La", in which Yan said that "Shangri-La" is the actual name of a real town in the hilly and mountainous region in northwestern Yunnan Province, frequented by both Han and Tibetan locals. Martin Yan visited arts and craft shops and local farmers as they harvested crops, and sampled their cuisine.

Television presenter and historian Michael Wood, in the "Shangri-La" episode of the BBC documentary series In Search of Myths and Heroes, suggests that the legendary Shangri-La is the abandoned city of Tsaparang in upper Satluj valley, and that its two great temples were once home to the kings of Guge in modern Tibet.

The Travel Channel in 2016 aired two episodes of Expedition Unknown that followed host Josh Gates to Nepal and its surrounding areas, including the sky caves found there, in search of Shangri-La. His findings offer no proof that Shangri-La is or was real.

An unusual consequence of the Doolittle Raid of 1942 came after, when (in the interests of secrecy) President Franklin Roosevelt answered a reporter's question by saying that the raid had been launched from "Shangri-La".[16] The true details of the raid were revealed to the public one year later, in April 1943.[17] In 1944, the US Navy commissioned the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La, with Doolittle's wife Josephine as the sponsor.

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union gave the equatorial, dark, low-lying area of Saturn's moon Titan the name Shangri-La.[18]

• In 1937 Lutcher Stark, a Texas philanthropist, started building his own Shangri-La in Orange, Texas. His Shangri-La was an azalea garden situated alongside a cypress-tupelo swamp. By 1950, thousands of people were travelling to Orange to visit Shangri-La, and many magazines published photographs of it. In 1958, a major snowstorm struck east Texas,[19] destroying thousands of azaleas and closing the garden for 40 years. The garden has been renovated and is now open to the public once again.[20][21][22]
• The businessman Harold Nixon Porter established a nature reserve called Shangri-La in Betty's Bay in South Africa in 1955. The name was changed to Harold Porter National Botanical Garden when the reserve was bequeathed to the National Botanic Gardens of South Africa in 1959.[23]
• In 1983 a tourist resort built on the banks of Kachura Lake in Skardu, northern Pakistan, was based on the idea of Hilton's novel. The resort is named Shangrila Resort. Today, the lake itself is also known as Shangrila Lake.[24]
• In 1971, Malaysian businessman Robert Kuok founded the luxury hotel chain Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts in Kuala Lumpur, borrowing the name for the sprawling hotel empire which now spans from Asia to Europe.[25]

• California's Ojai Valley was the location for the 1937 Frank Capra film Lost Horizon. The outdoor scenes of the villagers of Shangri-La and a cavorting Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt were in fact filmed in nearby Sherwood Forest (Westlake Village) and Palm Springs. The exterior of the grand lamasery was built and later dismantled on the Columbia Ranch in Burbank, California.[26] However, according to film historian Kendall Miller in the photodocumentary bonus feature on the Lost Horizon DVD, an aerial shot of Ojai Valley taken from an outlook on Highway 150 was used to represent the Shangri-La valley.
• A film of the same name, Lost Horizon, was remade in 1973, starring Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Sir John Gielgud, Michael York, Charles Boyer.
• In the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow after being knocked unconscious by a large amount of dynamite, Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Kaji (Omid Djalili) wake up in Shangri-La and are given new clothes by Tibetan-speaking monks, as their old ones had to be burned due to radiation.
• In the 2007 direct-to-video film Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!, Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Rogers discover Shangri-La hidden within Mount Everest.
• In the film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the third film in the trilogy, Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his family, with the help of Lin (Isabella Leong), discover Shangri-La in the Himalayas. The waters of Shangri-La granted immortality to Lin and her mother Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh).
• In the 2019 animated film Missing Link, the protagonist Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) is tasked by a civilized incarnation of Bigfoot called Mr. Link (Zach Galifianakis) to help the latter relocate to Shangri-La in the Himalayas where the yetis (whom Mr. Link believes to be his relatives) reside.

• In the 2009 video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves the main plot involves the Cintamani Stone, a massive jewel from the fabled city of Shambhala, or Shangri-La. The character, Nathan Drake, refers to the city by both names. The penultimate chapter of the game sees you enter the city.
• In the 2014 video game Far Cry 4 one of the main missions requires the player to travel to Shangri-La.
• A downloadable Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies map is named Shangri-La.
• In the video game series Yakuza there is a soapland named Shangri-La in the fictional city of Kamurocho.

Eiichi Ikegami wrote a novel titled Shangri-La (2005); an anime adaptation of the novel was released in 2008.

• A track from The Kinks' 1969 album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), also covered by The Mock Turtles, is titled Shangri-La.
• Featured in "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, released in 1975 . " My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon...."
• The closing track from Electric Light Orchestra's 1976 album A New World Record is titled "Shangri-La"
• The opening track to Mother Love Bone's debut album, Apple is titled "This is Shangri-la".
• Stevie Nicks released a solo album in 2001 titled "Trouble in Shangri-La".
• The fourth solo studio album by Mark Knopfler released in 2004 is titled "Shangri-La".
• South Korean boy band VIXX released their fourth mini-album in 2017 titled "Shangri-La", it featured the promoting single "Shangri-La (도원경/桃源境; Do Won Kyung)"
• In 2020 Ed O'Brien, guitarist of Radiohead, released the single "Shangri-La" from his first solo album, Earth.[27].

• Allen, Charles. (1999). The Search for Shangri-La: A Journey into Tibetan History. Little, Brown and Company (UK). ISBN 0-316-64810-8. Reprinted by Abacus, London. 2000. ISBN 0-349-11142-1.
• Reinhard, Johan (1978) Khembalung: The Hidden Valley. Kailash, A Journal of Himalayan Studies 6(1): 5–35, Kathmandu.
• Wood, Michael (2005) "Michael Wood: In search of Myths and Heroes: Shangri-La" PBS Educational Broadcasting Company
• Mother Love Bone single "This is Shangri-La" of debut album "Apple" (1990)