James Hilton’s Shangri-La concept is now a nightmare of influencers and consumerism
There aren’t many fictional places that entered the public consciousness like James Hilton’s Shangri-La, the monastery he writes about in Tibet, which is now part of China, such that in the Western world, it’s not just a place from a book but has become a shorthand for an unattainable utopia.
Hilton wrote about Shangri-La in his 1933 novel Lost Horizons, which was released 17 years before Tibet found itself annexed by Mao Zedong, and a year after the formation of the People’s Republic of China.
Think of Shangri-La and your mind is met with snowy Himalayan peaks, monasteries and an air of quiet and calm, a place that has escaped the modern complexities of life, but in China, it’s a real place, a Tibetan-themed resort, packed with big hotels, endless streets of shops, and plane-loads of influencers arriving daily, looking for just the perfect photo for their Instagram or RedNote.
Shangri-La is a fascinating example of a literary dream being turned into a consumer-driven theme park, and it stands more as a statement about tourism in 2026 than it does its origin story, which, when Hilton wrote Lost Horizon, he did so as an Englishman who had lived through the horrors of World War I as a teen.
His work echoed the trauma of that era and the fear that Europeans harboured for the future, with the story seeing a group of Westerners survive a Himalayan plane crash and then discovering a society that had no violence or extremism. While Hilton didn’t explicitly mark Shangri-La on the map, the book featured Tibetan and Buddhist ideals, with life balance and contemplation both being the key to an ideal life.
For generations, various regions in southwest China claimed to be the inspiration for Hilton’s story, and in 2001, the Chinese government decided to rename Zhongdian County in Yunnan Province to Shangri-La, officially turning this metaphorical nirvana into a real, living, breathing place.
It was a smart choice, as, after all, this is a region that doesn’t feel in line with the rest of China and feels Tibetan. Ethnically, the locals are very different to the majority of other groups in the country, and this part of the Tibetan plateau has lush, deep gorges, grassland, snow-capped mountains and monasteries, making it an easy sell for Western audiences who have a fantasy of Tibet rather than real knowledge of the region.
In the following years, the number of tourists skyrocketed, with Shangri-La becoming a must-visit destination not only for outsiders but Chinese visitors, too, but it’s an act, an illusion, for the old town of Shangri-La looks Tibetan, with prayer wheels, wooden buildings and any amount of shops looking to sell you scarves made with yak wool, however, dig deeper and this isn’t real but as organic as the pizzas and fried chicken you can buy there.
A 2014 renovation following a fire saw a desire to fuel consumption and create the perfect visual replication of Tibetan bliss, rather than upholding any true historical accuracy or thought of those living there.
In Lost Horizon, the Shangri-La described was a place that resisted modernity, where people lived slow, and meaning mattered; ironically, that’s the exact opposite of the Shangri-La we see today. The only meaning that matters is financial, with faux-spirituality sold as a market commodity, where culture becomes an aesthetic backdrop to social media posts, while monasteries offer photo opportunities rather than contemplation.
Many visitors would be quick to point out that it’s irrelevant, as they’re having a good time, seeing different landscapes and taking a break from the non-stop pace of Chinese city life, and while those are fair points, they ignore the hot-button question of Tibetan identity and commodify spirituality, ultimately becoming a parody of the qualities that Shangri-La was meant to represent.
This is a part of a wider trend that’s seen consumerism and spirituality fused together through tourism, an instance of which is Bali being overrun by yoga-loving matcha latte drinkers, Nepal being overtaken by balloon-pant donning gap-year students, and it appears that Shangri-La is the next stop on the pipeline of knock-off spirituality to help influencers find inner peace in brand deals.
