Postmodern tourism and the sham of Shangri-La

The early 1990s signified an important moment in Bhutanese history, as a small kingdom sought geopolitical sovereignty by claiming (and sometimes violently enforcing) a national identity. Stories about a 'Shangri-La about to lose its culture', defending itself through a series of culture-protection laws, could suddenly be found in the popular media around the world. Meanwhile, critical voices of the Thimphu government's undertaking remained few and far between, even though what they had to discuss was striking: xenophobia, contravention of international humanitarian law, and the largest per-capita expulsion of a group of citizens in modern record. Looking at such a dissonant narrative, it is hard to imagine that these two accounts are really of the same place – a utopian paradise on the one hand, and a purgatory of international human-rights crisis on the other. All the while, very little effort has been given over to exploring the links between these divergent discourses representing Bhutan. In today's day and age, how is it that an issue such as the Bhutanese Shangri-La can simultaneously be a farce for some and a utopia for others?

The popularisation of the idea of Shangri-La as a mythical, magical valley can perhaps be wholly ascribed to James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Since its publication, the term has been circulated and reused not only to describe mountain states (say, Tibet and Bhutan), but also various tourism resorts and even the US presidential retreat, with Camp David previously being called Shangri-La. Travel writing has, of course, been by far the most prolific genre for the global production of this idea. In a 2002 article published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, from the US, a writer named Barbara Watson discussed the pervasive and continuing importance of Hilton's text in creating this geographical imaginary for Bhutan. "Normally, I don't carry novels with me on trips; reality always turns out to be more satisfying than any fiction," Watson wrote following a visit to Bhutan. "But this time, on a whim, I'd packed a copy of 'Lost Horizon', the 1933 classic that gave the world a new name for paradise: Shangri-La. In Bhutan, it proved as useful as a guidebook."