changsha

I longed to visit Yunnan province. Nestled in my cave at BLCU, I read about the region. Lost Horizon, by James Hilton captivated me from start to finish. ‘Shangri-La’ was heaven on earth –where one would find inner peace, love and purpose. My tickets to Yunnan were booked and I used the two days I had left in Beijing to read up on Shangri-La. I learned that the writing of Joseph Rock, who between 1922 and 1949 studied the flora, peoples and languages of Yunnan, was the inspiration for the creation of Hilton’s Himalayan utopia.Rock was based in a tiny village called Yuhu, populated by the Naxi minority and situated at the foot of the Snow Mountain – the southernmost Himalayan peak. Rock wrote about Yuhu – and Hilton’s Shangri-La, the one I had fallen deeply in love with – was based on what Rock wrote. After a gruelling eight hour bus journey through the awe-inspiring Yunnan landscape, I was almost in Hilton’s Shangri-La. I was reluctant to arrive. My fear, based on what I was looking at for eight hours from a car window, was that I would be saddened by the poverty and strife of everyday life in this most remote of places. Today, what remains of Rock's Yuhu legacy is a small museum dedicated to his time in the village. Inside there are copies of editions of National Geographic magazines that he contributed to. It also contains tools that he brought from America, or procured while in Yuhu. Intimidating and majestic, the Snow Mountain overlooks Yuhu like a 6,000m tall jagged toothed guard dog protecting its owners. The meandering streets wind in tandem with the streams as horses trot nonchalantly. The village elders are happy to retire in such a beautiful place and the children seem content to stay there until they grow up. As I allowed myself to dream about what it would be like to live here, I couldn’t help but notice the elderly man raking through the stinking bin a few metres away. The stray dogs fighting with open wounds and the complete absence of street lights. The sun fell behind the mountain and soon it would be pitch black. The next morning, as I waited for the bus, I spotted a woman collecting plastic bottles. The bus was approaching and although I felt it invasive, I asked her if she felt resentful of the hardships the villagers were born into.“What hardship? She kept a straight face for a few awkward seconds.“No! We live in Shangri-la!” Her face lit up and she let out a hearty chuckle. I had expected to see a world of pessimism.