A visit to Zhongdian county or Shangri-La County, a primarily Tibetan county in northwestern Yunnan Province in southwest China and the capital of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
The county was formerly called Zhongdian County (Chinese: Zhongdiàn Xiàn) but was renamed in 2001 after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area. The local Tibetan population refers to it by the name Gyalthang. "Shangri-La" or "Zhongdian" may also refer to Jiantang Town (Jiàntáng Zhèn), the capital of the county. (Source: Wikipedia)
We visited Zhongdian town in December at the time of festivities at the Songzanlin Monastery.