Arriving at the Deqing, China airport wasn’t what I expected. This place, determined to be the ‘lost horizon’ of the 1939 so-named book, is now called Shangrila even by the local tribesmen. It took 3 flights and over 12 hours to get here from Hanoi, one of the closest cross-borders cities. The temperature dropped from a hot, humid 85 degrees to cold, dry and just above freezing. The altitude rose to nearly 10,000 feet. The lack of oxygen causes insomnia, headaches, dizziness, blackouts, and odd emotional and mental irregularities for some. Not to mention the inability to walk short distances without losing your breath and having your heart pound out of your chest.
So on the night of arrival the altitude-induced daze made this place of gold shimmering temples high on hills and flapping ubiquitous prayer flags seem like a dream world. This was only accentuated the next morning when we woke to snow on the ground – a beautiful contrast to the fragile new pink blossoms of the peach trees. Like Kalapapa on Molokai Island, adding 4, 000 years of human history and great spiritual significance to two major world religions, Shangrila really is ‘a place apart’.
It’s April, I’m freezing, the land is still bare. Thinking of life before all the delicious Tibetan, Chinese, Nepalese, and Hindi restaurants, there’s no sign of anything to eat in the landscape. The water and forest provide much to sustain life, but you can’t eat pine trees. Reminding me of the relationship between Native Americans and buffalos, the people survive by raising yaks: yak meat, yak cheese, and yak hair provide everything to the nomadic people. What it can’t, they trade for with the farmers (i.e. grain). It’s a kids’ dreamland: no veggies in the diet at all. I guess humans here evolved to get their nutrients and vitamins from other sources – as opposed to chewable Flintstones.
It’s so beautiful but so harsh when you look out at the glacier-cut snow-capped mountains and vast flat brown valleys in between. Shangrila was the last stop on the Tea Horse Road before making the treacherous mountain trek to Lhasa, capital of present day Tibet (although China drew borders the Tibetans live throughout this area that covers parts of Yunnan, Tibet and Sichuan provinces).
How do people survive in this place that appears like nature is intentionally trying to kill you? As I look out from a hilltop temple toward the intimidating 22,000-foot Mount Kagebo, I question why I developed an environmental focus and wonder if I would have done the same outside such a benign environment as Hawaii. Why would you want to help – or save, ha! – such an environment? What’s there to be attached to and want to help? No cute sea turtles or friendly dolphins.
Yet this is one of the most nature-reverent societies I’ve seen. Is it, like Sri Lanka and Bhutan, due to Buddhist beliefs on non-killing? The temple paintings depict the four-friends story of the elephant, monkey, rabbit and bird who helped each other reach the tree’s fruit to teach humans a lesson about collaboration. The prayer flags represent the five elements: red=fire, blue=space/sky, yellow=earth, green=water, white=air/wind. And even the stray dogs at the temple are treated as wise elders that deserve respect.
When I ask my friend, who is a local guide, he explains it is Buddhism but also pre-Buddhist beliefs that back nature-loving practices. The flags were used, with same colors but minus the scriptures, before Buddhism came to this area – when Shamanism was the ‘religion’ with its worship and reverence of nature. Mountains, animals and other natural elements were ancestors and peers in the great, repeated cycle of life.
So as long as people have been in this land, they have been worshipping, not cursing the environment. I’m amazed considering I’ve been cursing since the power went out at midnight, turning off the electric blanket, my only source of heat, and since I tried to take a shower sans hot water, and since walking in freezing rain without an umbrella (who would have thought I’d need it on the edge of the Tibetan plateau!) I’m having trouble seeing the beauty, let alone spiritual value of this environment.
But maybe that’s the difference between modern and pre-modern nomadic people. We love the environments that make us feel good, give us beautiful views, and provide a place we can relax and enjoy from a beach chair or ambling walking path. From this view, rain is an inconvenience, not a life-giving necessity. The nomads are looking for different things from the environment. The rivers and forests provide. And if they care for them as they do their pig, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens and yaks, they can live well. And they did, enough to build these brilliant temples and develop a religion that the Western world is now seeking to give answers to personal and social problems it can’t solve.
I’m humbled by this grand, intimidating landscape and the copper-colored, high-cheeked beauties with permanent smiling-eye wrinkles that call it home. They make this cold place warm somehow.
Nature here is bigger. It encompasses all the ‘bad’ (in terms of what we consider a relaxing beach-vacation venue) as well as good. The yin and the yang. It’s all of it. I’m challenged to open up, rather than shut out the harsh, cold places and include them in my nature-lovers view of the world. Otherwise I miss out on an entire realm of what nature offers – I miss the taste of fresh veggies when always eating candy. The full spectrum is more vibrant. Opening show us it’s much bigger than we imagined. It enlarges the platform on which we see life happening.
Maybe nature’s not ‘out to get me’ here. Maybe it’s pushing me to consider what’s beautiful and worth preserving. Maybe it’s pushing what I consider livable and lovable.
And have you looked deeply into the big brown eyes of a yak? Irresistibly lovable.
So on the night of arrival the altitude-induced daze made this place of gold shimmering temples high on hills and flapping ubiquitous prayer flags seem like a dream world. This was only accentuated the next morning when we woke to snow on the ground – a beautiful contrast to the fragile new pink blossoms of the peach trees. Like Kalapapa on Molokai Island, adding 4, 000 years of human history and great spiritual significance to two major world religions, Shangrila really is ‘a place apart’.
It’s April, I’m freezing, the land is still bare. Thinking of life before all the delicious Tibetan, Chinese, Nepalese, and Hindi restaurants, there’s no sign of anything to eat in the landscape. The water and forest provide much to sustain life, but you can’t eat pine trees. Reminding me of the relationship between Native Americans and buffalos, the people survive by raising yaks: yak meat, yak cheese, and yak hair provide everything to the nomadic people. What it can’t, they trade for with the farmers (i.e. grain). It’s a kids’ dreamland: no veggies in the diet at all. I guess humans here evolved to get their nutrients and vitamins from other sources – as opposed to chewable Flintstones.
It’s so beautiful but so harsh when you look out at the glacier-cut snow-capped mountains and vast flat brown valleys in between. Shangrila was the last stop on the Tea Horse Road before making the treacherous mountain trek to Lhasa, capital of present day Tibet (although China drew borders the Tibetans live throughout this area that covers parts of Yunnan, Tibet and Sichuan provinces).
How do people survive in this place that appears like nature is intentionally trying to kill you? As I look out from a hilltop temple toward the intimidating 22,000-foot Mount Kagebo, I question why I developed an environmental focus and wonder if I would have done the same outside such a benign environment as Hawaii. Why would you want to help – or save, ha! – such an environment? What’s there to be attached to and want to help? No cute sea turtles or friendly dolphins.
Yet this is one of the most nature-reverent societies I’ve seen. Is it, like Sri Lanka and Bhutan, due to Buddhist beliefs on non-killing? The temple paintings depict the four-friends story of the elephant, monkey, rabbit and bird who helped each other reach the tree’s fruit to teach humans a lesson about collaboration. The prayer flags represent the five elements: red=fire, blue=space/sky, yellow=earth, green=water, white=air/wind. And even the stray dogs at the temple are treated as wise elders that deserve respect.
When I ask my friend, who is a local guide, he explains it is Buddhism but also pre-Buddhist beliefs that back nature-loving practices. The flags were used, with same colors but minus the scriptures, before Buddhism came to this area – when Shamanism was the ‘religion’ with its worship and reverence of nature. Mountains, animals and other natural elements were ancestors and peers in the great, repeated cycle of life.
So as long as people have been in this land, they have been worshipping, not cursing the environment. I’m amazed considering I’ve been cursing since the power went out at midnight, turning off the electric blanket, my only source of heat, and since I tried to take a shower sans hot water, and since walking in freezing rain without an umbrella (who would have thought I’d need it on the edge of the Tibetan plateau!) I’m having trouble seeing the beauty, let alone spiritual value of this environment.
But maybe that’s the difference between modern and pre-modern nomadic people. We love the environments that make us feel good, give us beautiful views, and provide a place we can relax and enjoy from a beach chair or ambling walking path. From this view, rain is an inconvenience, not a life-giving necessity. The nomads are looking for different things from the environment. The rivers and forests provide. And if they care for them as they do their pig, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens and yaks, they can live well. And they did, enough to build these brilliant temples and develop a religion that the Western world is now seeking to give answers to personal and social problems it can’t solve.
I’m humbled by this grand, intimidating landscape and the copper-colored, high-cheeked beauties with permanent smiling-eye wrinkles that call it home. They make this cold place warm somehow.
Nature here is bigger. It encompasses all the ‘bad’ (in terms of what we consider a relaxing beach-vacation venue) as well as good. The yin and the yang. It’s all of it. I’m challenged to open up, rather than shut out the harsh, cold places and include them in my nature-lovers view of the world. Otherwise I miss out on an entire realm of what nature offers – I miss the taste of fresh veggies when always eating candy. The full spectrum is more vibrant. Opening show us it’s much bigger than we imagined. It enlarges the platform on which we see life happening.
Maybe nature’s not ‘out to get me’ here. Maybe it’s pushing me to consider what’s beautiful and worth preserving. Maybe it’s pushing what I consider livable and lovable.
And have you looked deeply into the big brown eyes of a yak? Irresistibly lovable.