THe Shangri-La - China

Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia — a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. In the novel Lost Horizon, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance. The word also evokes the imagery of exoticism of the Orient. In the ancient Tibetan scriptures, existence of 7 such places is mentioned as Nghe-Beyul Khimpalung. One of such places is mentioned to be situated somewhere in the Makalu-Barun region.
Several places in the Buddhist Himalaya between northern India and Tibet have claimed to be the location for Hilton's fictional Shangri-La, largely to attract tourism.
In China, Tao Qian of the Jin Dynasty described a Shangri-La in his work Story of the Peach Blossom Valley (Chinese: 桃花源記, pinyin: Táohuā Yuán Jì)[citation needed]. In modern China, the Zhongdian county was renamed to 香格里拉 (Xiānggélǐlā, Shangri-La in Chinese) in 2001, to attract tourists. The legendary Kun Lun Mountains in Tibet offer other possible Shangri-La valleys.
A popularly believed inspiration for Hilton's Shangri-La is the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan, close to the Tibetan border, which Hilton visited a few years before Lost Horizon was published. Being an isolated green valley surrounded by mountains, enclosed on the western end of the Himalayas, it closely matches the description in the novel. A Shangri-La resort in the nearby Skardu valley is a popular tourist attraction.
Today, various places claim the title, such as parts of southern Kham in southwestern Yunnan province, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian. Places like Sichuan and Tibet also claim the real Shangri-La was in its territory. 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 cooperation in 2004. Also in 2001, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County.
Bhutan, which until 1999[dubious – discuss] was largely isolated from the outside world and has its unique form of Tibetan Buddhism, has been hailed as the last Shangri-La.
Another place that has been thought to have inspired the concept of Shangri-La is the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon.
TV Presenter and historian Michael Wood, in the "Shangri-La" episode of the PBS documentary series In Search of Myths and Heroes, suggests that the legendary Shangri-La is the abandoned city of Tsaparang, and that its two great temples were once home to the kings of Guge in modern Tibet.
American explorers Ted Vaill and Peter Klika visited the Muli area of southern Sichuan Province in 1999, and revealed that the Muli monastery in this remote region was the model for James Hilton's Shangri-La, which Hilton learned about from articles on this area in several National Geographic Magazine articles in the late 1920s and early 1930s written by Austrian-American explorer Joseph Rock. Vaill completed a film based on their research, "Finding Shangri-La", which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.