It was for a moment like this that I had made the long journey last fall to northern Yunnan Province from my home in Beijing — which has the dubious distinction of being both one of the most polluted and one of the most populous cities in the world.
Back home, looking at a map of the rugged Tibetan areas of western China, my eyes had fallen on the deep river valleys of Yunnan, where three of Asia's great waterways come tumbling down from their glacial sources in the mountains of the high Tibetan plateau.
The Chinese authorities have always made it difficult for foreigners to travel in the Tibetan areas, but restrictions have gotten much worse since the protests and ethnic riots that erupted across the region in March 2008. In the last year, the government has occasionally closed off large swaths of western China to foreigners, including Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and the famous monastery of Labrang, in Gansu Province. Parts of northern and western Sichuan Province, long a favorite of backpackers, have also been shut off for months at a time. Ethnic tensions are still high, and the government has deployed soldiers and paramilitary units throughout the area.
I had heard that northern Yunnan was an exception. There was no unrest there last year. What's more, the local government has adopted relatively progressive tourism policies, and foreigners have not had their access curbed. Ethnic Han Chinese tourists also seemed less fearful of going there.
Months after my trip, the Chinese government closed most Tibetan areas of China to foreigners as security forces prepared for possible unrest in March, during the 50th anniversary of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. But foreigners were still allowed to travel in northern Yunnan, and it remains the most accessible Tibetan region of China.
The centerpiece of the tourism in that corner of Yunnan is the Tibetan town of Gyalthang, called Zhongdian by the Chinese but renamed Shangri-La years ago by the local government to boost tourist numbers. The government had hoped to evoke the mythical lamasery that is the setting for James Hilton's 1933 novel "Lost Horizon."
My friend Tini and I made the town our first stop. The large and wealthy monastery on its outskirts, Ganden Sumtseling Gompa, one of the most important in the Tibetan world, was now being carefully renovated decades after the destruction of the Cultural Revolution. Tourists could walk among the buildings, looking into prayer halls as rows of monks sat reading their sutras.
But a sense of loss, so deeply ingrained in Tibetans, could still be felt here. An older monk, when he heard I was from the United States, turned to me and eagerly asked, "Have you seen the Dalai Lama?"
Back in town, Gyalthang seemed a little too manicured, with cafes in the renovated old quarter serving pizza to tour groups and souvenir shops hawking colorful pillow cushions. I wanted a rawer experience, something closer to what I had experienced years ago on the Tibetan plateau and in the mountains of Ladakh and Sikkim, both in India.
