In 1933, when James Hilton wrote the classic Lost Horizon, he probably never expected to leave generations asking the question: Where is Shangri-La? Even less could he have imagined his book erupting into a regional tourism dispute in western China, simultaneously igniting a platform for China's alternative culture movement. But that is exactly what has happened.
Where is Shangri-La? Some say in Tibet. Others say Qinghai has more of that Tibetan feeling than Tibet, as if foreigners could determine better than Tibetans what Tibet should feel like. At the same time, a walled city in Yunnan called Dali claims that it is the original Shangri-La. Then, the nearby town of Lijiang, the ancient kingdom of the Naxi minority, discovered a stone tablet with the Chinese characters Xiang-ge-li-la - close enough to 'Shangri-La' - carved on it. So Lijiang advertised it was Shangri-La. Tourists poured in. Yet another county, Zhongdian, a mostly Tibetan-populated corner of northwest Yunnan, says it is Shangri-La, and cites the physical features described in Hilton's novel (Hilton never visited the region). So tourists started going there. Then, local governments in Sichuan said that Shangri-La was there.
Four counties and four separate regions were soon locked in one of the most ironic disputes between regional governments in China's recent history, until the central government finally proclaimed one county, Zhongdian, the official Shangri-La. This brokered deal allowed the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai and the Tibet region each to use the name Shangri-La for promotional purposes.
In fact, none of the officials in any of China's self-proclaimed Shangri-Las had any idea that Hilton's book described a land of peace and ethnic harmony, which would draw from around the world those seeking spirituality and hoping to shed western material values. The officials were, instead, groping for tourist dollars by packaging, franchising and distributing Shangri-La as an attraction, in some ways threatening to turn China's national minorities into a freak show.
While these officials were busy promoting their respective Shangri-Las, and while the central government was encouraging tourists and business to 'go west', a curious phenomenon occurred. Instead of attracting foreign multinationals, the Shangri-La pockets in western China began to attract China's own version of counter-culture. As old Beijing is bulldozed into oblivion, and replaced by faceless cement and blue glass, China's cultural capital looks ever more like Seoul. With its centralised control of the media, Beijing may still be China's artistic centre in commercial terms, but the creative mandate has dissipated to the western regions, where alternative lifestyles flourish along with activists promoting ethnic and environmental grassroots projects.
I began asking my friends among Chinese artists about their own search for Shangri-La. Cheng Xingdong, a curator and adviser to international art collectors, said: 'Yunnan has become China's centre of alternative culture. Artists and intellectuals are now gathering there. It is a focal point of new ideas and creativity. The history of Yunnan is fusion.