A Place Called Shangri La

I wake this morning to the distant barking of a dog and the yawning bawl of an ox in the street below. There is the gentle smell of wood smoke. On three sides of my grand wooden-walled bedroom are views of the surrounding mountains over curly-roofed Tibetan houses with wooden tiles held down by stones. Cooking smoke drifts from the roofs of the small town.

The sun is not yet over the horizon but the air is filled with clear gold. Banks of mist lie between the mountains to the north, behind a perfectly round hill on very top of which is perched a temple surrounded by walls built into the shape of the turtle. Later I will climb the hill and ring the great bell of the temple, if I am permitted.

My hotel is built entirely of wood and I have the best guest bed room, decorated in Tibetan style, but modern with hot and cold running water. It is clean, with a real bath and a sit-down loo – a rarity to be treasured on my travels so far. In an alcove on the west wall of the bedroom is the huge matrimonial bed wide enough to sleep five if one were so inclined.

At this altitude any sudden exertion makes me breathe deeply. Shangri-La lies at the northern end of a long glacial valley high in the Tibetan mountains. There are sudden abrupt hills and shelves of ancient moraine between fertile meadows and lakes. It is cold and the air is like glass so that distant things seem suddenly near.

oooOooo

I wrote that in an email while I was in China this summer. I came across it again this morning when I was looking for something else and I thought I would like to share it.

Shangri La is a real place.

But I was sadly disappointed to learn that the Chinese Authorities adopted the name by renaming a town that had previously had a perfectly good name of its own. They even held a competition between several contending towns in the area to see who would get the prize. It must give commercial advantage to the local tourist industry, but this doesn’t sound like the communism that I learned at my dear old proletarian grandmother’s knee.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject – if they really want to attract tourists they ought allow foreigners access to their own money, or how can they expect us to spend it on them?

This is what it was like:

To change a traveller’s cheque or three requires queuing in a bank – ah, so sorry, not this bank, you go to Commercial Bank of China in another street at the other end of town, this Agricultural Bank of China, but in another town different but here must go Commercial Bank of China, so sorry – walk two miles, queue again…

The Bank is crowded with bustling Chinese people all doing business and all talking to each other at the same time in loud voices as they push past me and bump me with their bags and shoulders. In any public place it seems necessary for the Chinese language to be shouted in order for the hearer to get the full piquancy of whatever is being said.

I gaze nervously at the guard’s truncheon, which is a hexagonal bar made of polished steel, covered on all surfaces with sharp half-inch spikes. Decide to avoid making any sudden moves.

I glance at the three pretty Chinese girls who are all clustered behind me watching me with worried expressions.

‘Yah?’ shouts the large uniformed lady behind the counter suddenly.

I shuffle forward and push my passport and a bundle of cheques through the grill, trying to stop the surrounding crowd gazing into my wallet to see how much I was worth (not much). She snatches the goodies and marches away into the back of the Bank.

I wait.

Suddenly she is back and pushing most of my cheques back at me shaking her head. Apparently there is a limit to how much I can cash – equivalent to about 200 US dollars. What’s wrong with my money? Don’t they want it?

Eventually the deed is done – after signatures, scrutiny of my passport by at least four officials of progressively increasing rank, long telephone calls in belligerent quick-fire Chinese, unreadable stamps in my passport in red ink and photocopies of everything in sight.

A large bundle of Chinese notes is pushed guiltily through the bars at me.

I grab them, smile weakly and struggle through the crowds back into the sunlight.

*Sigh*

They have permitted me so little money that I’ll have to face the whole thing again in two days time.