In search of Shangri-La

Déqin county, Yunnan, western China. A region with a Tibetan majority which, within the vast population of the Chinese empire, is one of its many ethnic minorities.

People still live from farming and tradition, to the rhythm of songs and dances repeated every evening in the main square. They can still practise their faith and their customs freely, but at a high price, because the Chinese government has moved in on them ideologically and historically, through a carefully planned tourist invasion that exploits this magnificent, ancient anthropological world.

A minority that is fortunately protected, in a state of compromise that strains its capacity to keep its authenticity and its historical roots. Mass marketing, bound up with rampant Chinese capitalism, finds one of its fullest expressions — with all its astonishing contradictions — in a Tibetan-style theme park which, by a shrewd commercial idea, was renamed "Shangri-La", after the enchanted city in Hilton's novel.