Height of luxury in Shangri-La?

This is essentially a tourist puff-piece advertising luxury breaks in Tibet, but it hints at a crucial process at work within the mountain kingdom. As China develops, so it seeks to transform areas like Tibet into not just productive colonies or buffer zones, but also sites for the experience of luxury and leisure. After years of brutal subjugation and repression of their culture, now Tibetans are expected to perform certain roles required of them for the edification of western or rich Chinese tourists.

In the past week, China has also opened what it proudly labels the ‘highest railway on earth.’ Big deal. It’s another artery to transport bloated tourists into places where they enjoy luxury off the back of oppression.

How I miss air. Life seems so much more straightforward with a sufficient supply of oxygen. Gasping with the exertion of flopping from my colossal double bed, I crawl across my Tibetan mansion and dial room service. Two deodorant-style air canisters complete with plastic face mask arrive promptly. Reunited with the ability to move as nature intended, I venture out into the rarefied atmosphere of China’s Yunnan Province. If inside was breathless, the world beyond is breathtaking.

A sweeping valley of yellow mustard flowers winds towards steep, pine-smothered slopes. In the distance, the grey spires of snow-streaked peaks rear up, summits stretching into an impossibly blue sky. Small figures in vivid pink headscarves can be picked out among the fields, wandering the same narrow tracks their ancestors have followed for centuries. It’s a scene of such pastoral perfection that time itself feels frozen.

Here, amid the foothills of the vast central Tibetan plateau, is a place touched by magic, a land of undiluted beauty that is said to have inspired one of the great myths of modern times. This was Shangri-La, the inspiration for James Hilton’s 1930s novel Lost Horizon, which depicted an isolated mountain paradise where time wound so slowly that…

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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