Fun Facts About Shangri-La Gifts and Publications

Fun Facts About Our Shangri-La in Warren Center, Pennsylvania Ithaca, NY and Cortland, NY

________________________________________________ We watch peacocks wandering our grounds as we edit manuscripts for publication, or exercise by playing our extensive collection of player piano rolls. We enjoy a double manual harpsichord and rest in a tiled garden of Victorian, Edwardian and Art Nouveau majolica tiles. We play with our Birman named Mailie, or take our Collie named Lassie for walks to ship out book orders to you! We pamper our parrot, Moka who talks to everyone, especially when the phone rings. Snowpea has fully recovered from a cold winter and adopted two duckies as his family! We remodeled the Shangri-La library with antique tiles. Many are on sale in our Downtown Ithaca and Cortland shops. Mailie has now TAKEN OVER the Ithaca shop! Click on icon to LEFT to visit SPLC and other worthy links.	BUY BOOKS NOW... LASSIE wants a walk to take the mail out! We have 130 tiles of this design in one room. A single tile of this type prices at $165! Return to previous by clicking tile. Qu�on ne perd pas son temps en recherchant � quoi d�autres ont perdu le leur. Translate French? Click HERE! Translate German? Click HERE! Translate Italian? Click HERE! Translate Portuguese? Click HERE! Translate Spanish? Click HERE!
The Latest News of Shangri-La For latest Shangri-La news, visit our PRESS section on the toolbar above, or click on this picture of publisher Sheldon Gosline signing historic contract with Zhejiang University officials, in China. OTHER NEWS: Snow Pea needs a girlfriend ... prospective peahens please send photos and Email addresses. Also, we need a pet manager for our Cortland location. The pay is animal food and lots of love! Knowledge of Spanish is a plus. The Mission of Shangri-La We do our best to emulate our namesake, made famous through the novel by James Hilton and the movie by Frank Capra. The terms "people" to refer to Anglo-Europeans and "native" to refer to everyone else was de facto terminology of their era. Unlike either work of fiction, our "Shangri-La" is totally non-Eurocentric. The dated sentimentality of "the white man's burden" is not to be found in our utopian vision. We have carved out a living and working environment in our very own "Valley of the Blue Moon" a forgotten corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where there still is a community supper on every election day, hosted by the Women's Auxiliary, and everyone waves and toots the horn as they drive by, just to say hello. Our several lakes are the summertime home to many vacationers and the local general store is still the best place to get a little "news." But even our little corner of paradise was not left untouched by the events of September 11th 2001. We all wonder about the future. We intend the books published here at Shangri-La Publications to be thought provoking, even controversial, because we know that true peace comes from wisdom and understanding of the issues from each direction. Shangri-La also supports the fine work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as they promote tolerance, monitor hate and seek justice for all. We encourage you to visit our LINKS page. Our goal is grand but we hold to a modest approach. �The meek shall inherit the earth� � as quoted in Lost Horizon is our philosophical guide. We hope you enjoy our efforts. READ Prof. Gosline's paper, ORGANIC GLOBALIZATION AND SOCIALIZATION OF CIVILIZATION, given at the World Summit on the Information Society for WFIS, in Geneva, Switzerland, in December of 2003. 2005 is becoming the year of star appearances on THE COMMONS in downtown Ithaca! During Labor Day weekend, Whoopi Goldberg visited us at Shangri-La. She was in town for personal reasons, but she may become a regular since rumor has it that her boyfriend recently acquired a house in nearby Trumansburg, NY. Whoopi has also been at the Ithaca K-Mart and she regularly dines at Lucatelli's. Welcome back to Shangri-La anytime! If you have not spotted Whoopi in Ithaca yet, you can all have a chance on October 28th. The following weekend Ithaca College hosted American Idol's visit to THE COMMONS to sign autographs just outside of Shangri-La. Have we been transported to Hollywood or what?

AND NOW ... MORE DETAILS ABOUT THIS TILE

Victorian / Edwardian Majolica Tile


�	Style: Victorian majolica 
�	Manufacturer: Maw & Co? 
�	Pattern number: 6346-4 / T46E 
�	Dimensions: 6" x 6" 
�	Date: circa 1895 - 1910 

Dazzling in their bold use of color and wide range of designs, Victorian to Art Nouveau tiles are enjoying a resurgence in popularity. These international tile designs encompassed striking decorative elements to be used in residences and public buildings. High fired, these tiles retain their original color and beauty despite over one hundred years of use. 

A totally outstanding tile, literally as well as figuratively. A beautiful floral design molded in very high relief, expertly molded and with very brilliant glazes. The use of color suggest a later tile, early 20th century, but it must have been made by one of the very best manufacturers and so could be from the late 19th century.

The back has a molded impression of the front done to ensure consistency in clay thickness for higher quality molding. Experts believe this tile to be by Maw & Co as they are responsible for most of the molded back tiles we have seen, they often produced unnamed tiles with molded pattern numbers and the quality of molding and glazing is consistent with their excellent work.  However, we have very good reason to believe that this tile was produced in or near the city of Changchun, in Manchuria, from the period of Japanese industrial influence or occupation.

Where is the real Shangri-La?

Several locales in China fit the description, make the claim, and court the tourists!

By Michael Woods, Block News Alliance
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday, April 15, 2001

ZHONGDIAN, China -- Welcome to Shangri-La, fabled secret valley in the Himalayas that has captivated the imagination and lifted the spirit since James Hilton's 1933 novel, Lost Horizon.

Paradise on Earth. A place of eternal youth. A hidden kingdom of ancient learning untouched by the modern world. A utopia where humans live in harmony with the environment. A modern Eden.

That's the compelling image in Hilton's fictional work, with its hidden monastery, Buddhist lamas chanting sutras in front of flickering butter lamps, and the poignant story of love between Hugh Conway and the local girl, Lo-Tsen. The bestselling book inspired President Franklin Roosevelt to name what now is Camp David, Shangri-La, and Frank Capra turned it into a classic 1937 film.

It's all right here in the Zhongdian Valley, a community of about 300,000 mainly Tibetan people which the government claims as inspiration for Hilton's novel.

Or is Shangri-La really 120 miles south near China's ancient city of Lijiang, with its canalled Old Town tourist area -- and a broad new main street named Shangri-La Road? No, maybe Shangri-La really is near Dali, 250 miles west of Kunming, The government there is rebuilding Dali's ancient city wall as "Gateway to Shangri-La."

Or maybe it's even in another province, as towns in Sichuan, to the north, are insisting.

"Yunnan has many peaceful, remote places with a beautiful almost idyllic environment," Dr. Wang Zhijun, said in an interview. He is an ecologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences environmental institute in Kunming, capital of this southwestern province of Yunnan.

"People have a long life and stay healthy and happy in many places. But this Shangri-La? No. No. Why Zhongdian? Why Lijiang, or anywhere else?"

Dr. Chris Carpenter, of San Francisco State University, who has been working in China and neighboring countries since the early 1990s, offered a simple explanation. "Tourism," he said. "There's a big push to build tourist facilities and attract tourist money throughout Yunnan, and the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture which governs here is no exception. Private entrepreneurs and the government are investing in hotels and shops.

"You've got to admire their resourcefulness. A few years ago, the tourism people realized that they could make a lot of money from Hilton's book. So they reinvented an ancient myth about paradise on Earth."

David Huang, who heads the American and Canadian Department of a big government travel agency in Kunming, agreed. "A lot of people want to say they've been in Shangri La," Huang pointed out.

"The region that gets the reputation as namesake for the book ...well, it will get a lot of yuan from the tourists."

Zhongdian is the name of a sprawling county in northwestern Yunnan, and the city of about 42,000 that is its capital. The five-hour bus ride here from Lijiang climbs through soaring mountains in the Hengduan Range, cuts across a gorge system of great rivers that rush down from Tibet, and winds through stunning forests and isolated villages.

The route includes famous Tiger Leaping Gorge. There the banks of the Yangtze River narrow to a gap where, myth has it, a hunted tiger once leaped across and escaped.

A construction boom under way in many parts of Yunnan has left the main highway from Lijiang a rutted path. Nearby, road crews are constructing a new highway, with huge bridges spanning the valleys, that will carry tourists to Shangri-La. Zhongdian even got a brand new airport named -- what else? -- Shangri-La Regional Airport.

Finally, the bus bumps over a rise onto the Tibetan Plateau, at an altitude of 10,000 feet, revealing a vast flat plain with grazing yak, dzo (offspring of yak-cow matings), sheep, and goats. In the intense spring sun, farmers are plowing fields that will bear the staple crops -- potatoes, buckwheat, barley and corn -- or harvesting vegetables.

Zhongdian City boasts new hotels and tourist facilities along its single main street, The Great March Avenue. Foreigners were forbidden here until 1992, when the Chinese government opened the region to tourism.

Within a few years, a local amateur historian clued local government officials into similarities between Lost Horizon and Zhongdian. Hilton told of four Westerners who crashed in a beautiful landscape while escaping war-torn China. They were rescued by villagers and taken to the Valley of the Blue Moon - a place of great tranquility with snow mountains, grasslands, Tibetan people, red soil plateaus, with three rivers traversing the landscape.

The Yunnan Economy & Technology Research Center commissioned a study, which in 1997 concluded that facts were "certain." Its "careful investigation" found that an American transport did, indeed, crash in Zhongdian. Three rivers do crisscross this area -- the Mekong, Yangtze, and Golden Sand.

Snow-capped mountains? Yes, they tower everywhere against a cobalt-blue sky. Grasslands, Tibetan people, soil tinted red from high iron content? Yes!

But Dr. Carpenter pointed out that the same could be said for plenty of other areas of northern Yunnan.

Chinese Government puts Shangri-La on the Map
By Jonathan Ansfield, Monday January 7, 9:40 PM

BEIJING (Reuters) - The otherworldly paradise known as Shangri-La was such a enigma, according to novelist James Hilton, that its path could not be retraced, its location not found on any map.

Until now. Zhongdian County, in China's southwest province of Yunnan, will rename itself Shangri-La for the land immortalised in Hilton's 1933 adventure Lost Horizon after gaining approval from the State Council, China's cabinet, an official said on Monday.

"The State Council approved a proposal by the Yunnan provincial government last month to officially give the name to Zhongdian County," Sun Xiudong, an official from the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Beijing, told Reuters.

The decision was unlikely to end decades of hype among a handful of pristine locales in the sub-Himalayan region, where Yunnan and Sichuan provinces border Tibet, all of which claim the title to entice tourists.

Other communities would be allowed to go on using the name for promotional purposes, said Sun.

"These places are roughly in the same tourism area and we will not oppose them using Shangri-La in tourism from now on," he said.

But Zhongdian won government approval after the Yunnan government made a careful search for the area whose terrain best fit Hilton's description of a verdant valley crowned by a Tibetan Buddhist lamasery and encompassed by snow-capped peaks.

"Zhongdian is widely recognised by tourists as most resembling the description in James Hilton's novel," Sun said.

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