Panic in Shangri-La

Wee, sleekit, cow’ring, tim’rous beastie, O what a panic’s in thy breastie! This stanza from Burns, truly idiotic considering the situation I was in, kept swirling in my head as I paced about the hotel courtyard at three in the morning. It was driving me insane. The air was crisp and the moon was hiding behind a wall of clouds but I paid no attention. My heart was racing and I was having trouble breathing. After numerous rounds in the open courtyard, I was nowhere closer to calming down. My brain was starting to seize up in panic.

Desperate, I went to the front desk to see if I could get some help. It was deserted. I rang the bell several times and knocked on the desk where just a few hours ago our group of 40 had checked in. After a few increasingly frantic raps from me, a sleepy clerk came out of the office behind the desk and groggily asked, in halting English, what the matter was. I pleadingly said “I need help! I need a doctor!” After trying to make him understand my predicament several times without success, I gave up and concluded I was going to die on the rooftop of the world.

I was completely unaware that this trip would take this nasty turn when, a few months before, I received an invitation from my close friend and confrere, Tony Lo, to celebrate his 59th birthday. To the Chinese mind, the months in the womb prior to birth constitute the first year of one’s life so Tony was effectively celebrating his 60th birthday. Six months later, 80 of us converged from all over the world in the city of Lijiang to help Tony celebrate this milestone.

Lijiang is an ancient hill town in the north-western portion of the Chinese province of Yunnan where the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau converges with the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau. The city has a history going back more than 800 years and was a major stop in the ancient Silk Route linking South East Asia to China and the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. It was also part of the tea horse road which linked Yunnan with Sichuan and Tibet and which stopped at Xishuangbanna, Simao, Pu’er and Dali, towns whose tea became the foundation of Lijiang’s wealth. Old Town Lijiang was the political, commercial and cultural center of the Naxi people but is architecturally a blend of the many cultures that have come together in this site for centuries. The town is irregularly and asymmetrically laid out and has no city wall, indicating that the city was built for trade and not for political power.

The Naxi people are of a different ethnicity from the Han Chinese as their ancestors were originally nomads who eventually settled down in the area. They brought with them their own pictographic writing and indigenous religion called Dongba which considers religious activities more of an external behavior than an internal belief and cherry-picks from many religions according to the usefulness of their tenets, the foremost of which is that happiness is the core of life.

Springing from the belief that all living things are embodiments of the gods, Dongba tries to maintain a harmonious relationship with nature. This is best reflected in how the city of Lijiang has evolved and the reason it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Naxi have a special reverence for water and go to great lengths to protect it. Dumping into the water is expressly forbidden, hence all the rivers and waterways (which are many) that go through the town are crystal clear and sparkling clean. Lijiang also possesses an ancient water supply system of great complexity and ingenuity which works to this day and is fed by the waters flowing from the snow-capped mountains which surround the city. The heart of the Old Town is Square Market. It is open to all directions and all roads lead to the square. It is also conceivably the only square in ancient times with an automatic street wash system. By closing the water gate of West River nearby, the river water is allowed to overflow its banks, wash over the whole square and then run off into the adjacent Central River. Due to the great number of waterways, canals and rivers criss-crossing the Old Town, Lijiang is a world of bridges: slate bridges, arched stone bridges, chestnut board bridges and single plank bridges. The bridges link small streets and brook side lanes which are bordered by inns, quaint shops, tea and coffee houses and brightened up by weeping willows, flowering trees and shrubs, ivy and ubiquitous red lanterns. It was in this setting that Tony’s birthday celebration took place.

After an expertly choreographed three-day affair with a menu of activities catering to practically every whim and culminating in a dinner with fireworks and dancing in the moonlight, half of our group left to go back to work whilst the other half (myself included) ventured further north to the city of Diqing.

Diqing is located in northwest Yunnan province south of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. It has an average altitude of 3,380 meters (11,089 feet) and provides the only passage from Yunnan to Tibet. A portion of the surrounding area has been renamed Shangri-La (after James Hilton’s paradise in the novel Lost Horizon) because of its snow-covered mountains, endless grasslands, majestic canyons, azure lakes, vast cloud forests and quaint villages. Like Shangri-La, the area around Diqing is “an eternally pure and tranquil land.”

We arrived in Diqing in the early evening after a full day of travel. On the way, our group was driven alongside the rapids emanating from the peaks above us which further downstream would coalesce into the mighty Yangtze. At one point, we were brought to Tiger Leaping Gorge where the incipient Yangtze is so narrow that, according to local folklore, a tiger could leap from one side to another. When we arrived at our hotel, we were ushered into another banquet which was punctuated by a series of toasts to the health of our host, his wife, his sons and practically every guest in the room. Needless to say, we were all well lubricated by the end of it.

And that is how I found myself panic-stricken on a moonless night, on the outskirts of Diqing on the foothills of the Tibetan plateau. Looking desperately around me and not knowing what to do, I repaired to my bedroom in another attempt to calm myself down. Finding that the room had gotten stiflingly hot in my absence, I turned off the heater and the electric blanket. As the heat in the room dissipated, I felt my pulse and breathing slowly coming back to normal. It dawned on me what my problem was. I was in a place whose altitude was higher than what I was used to. The air was very thin, which made climbing a stretch. And I was much too inebriated after the endless toasts made with a lethal variety of drinks. All I needed to do was turn down the heat to relax. After a series of deep breaths, I found myself drifting back to sleep and was dead to the world in no time.

But deep within the recesses of my brain, I could hear the siren call of adventure, faint though it was, reminding me that, out there among the towering mountains, endless fields and cloud forests,  there were Tibetan Mastiffs, Golden Monkeys and Black Neck Cranes to see and an ancient town to explore.