Shangri-La

Shangri-La: ethereally beautiful, hard to reach, and expensive once you get there. It conjures words most delightful to tourists’ ears: “rare, remote, primitive, and strange.” If the service is poor, blame it on the altitude. So compelling is the name that right this minute, workmen, bulldozers, and cement trucks are busily remodeling a ham­ let near the China–Tibet border that claims to be the true Shangri-La. I would have brought up the link to geography as well, the de­scriptions of the botanist Joseph Rock, whose various expeditions for National Geographic in the 1920s and early 1930s led to his dis­covery of a lush green valley tucked in the heart of a Himalayan mountain topped by a “cone” of snow, as described in his article published in 1931. Some of the inhabitants there were purported to be more than a hundred fifty years old. (I have met demented resi­dents at old-age homes who have made similar claims.) James Hilton must have read the same article by Rock, for soon after, he used sim­ ilar descriptions in penning the mythical Shangri-La. Voilà, the myth was hatched, delusions and all. But the most interesting aspect to me is the other Shangri-La al­luded to in Lost Horizon, and that is a state of mind, one of moder­ation and acceptance. Those who practice restraint might in turn be rewarded with a prolonged life, even immortality, whereas those who don’t will surely die as a direct result of their uncontrolled impulses. In that world, blasé is bliss, and passion is sans raison. Passionate people create too many problems: They are reckless. They endanger others in their pursuit of fetishes and infatuations. And they self­ agitate when it is better to simply relax and let matters be. That is the reason some believe Shangri-La is so important as the antidote. It is a mindset for the masses—one might bottle it as Sublime Indiffer­ence, a potion that induces people to follow the safest route, which is, of course, the status quo, anesthesia for the soul.

Saving Fish From Drowning - Amy Tan