Shangri-La

Shangri-La (香格里拉) is an earthly paradise located in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The name first appeared in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by British author James Hilton, who described the place as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains.

From then on, though many wondered where Shangri-La was actually located, efforts to find it were in vain. Someone once claimed that the mystery would not be solved until the 21st century.

In 1996, Xuan Ke, a renowned scholar in China and recipient of honorary doctorates in anthropology and folk music, pointed out that the description of "Shangri-La" in James Hilton's book matched that of a place in Zhongdian County of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan – not only in landscape but also in customs.

Later on, in collaboration with experts, a tourism company in Yunnan and two corporations from Singapore spent a year conducting research to prove Xuan's theory.

On September 25, 1997, Shangri-La was determined to be located in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Zhuang Autonomous Region, after Xuan's theory was approved by the academic community. The mystery of the century had finally been solved.