Paradise Under Construction: Minorities, Myths and Modernity in Northwest Yunnan
2003; Routledge; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14631360301654
ISSN1469-2953
Autores Tópico(s)Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
ResumoUntil recently, Zhongdian County was a little known corner of Northwest Yunnan. All that changed when it began to call itself 'Shangri-la', the mythical paradise of the Tibetan Himalayas. On 17 December 2001, after years of intense lobbying by the county government, the State Council finally granted Zhongdian permission to officially rename itself 'Shangri-la County'. This article is an account of the economic and political forces behind the campaign for Shangri-la, including discussion of the Shangri-la Arts Festival in May 2002. The paper also takes up the dynamics between official and local identities as ethnic tourism expands in this Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It argues that Shangri-la's new tourism could be a force for strengthening ethnic identities, even if those identities are simultaneously rooted in the development of the modern Chinese state.
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