Shangri-La City Shangri-La City Shangri-La or Xianggelila is a county-level city in northwestern Yunnan province, People's Republic of China and is the location of the seat of the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Shangri-La was formerly called Zhongdian County () but was renamed on 17 December 2001 and upgraded into a county-level city on 16 December 2014 as Shangri-La (other spellings: Semkyi'nyida, Xianggelila, or Xamgyi'nyilha) after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel "Lost Horizon", in an effort to promote tourism in the area. The Tibetan population refers to this place by its traditional name Gyalthang or Gyaitang (;
James Hilton (novelist) his two most remembered books, "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" while living in a house on Oak Hill Gardens, in Woodford Green in north London. The house still stands, with a blue plaque marking Hilton's residence. By 1938 he had moved to California, and his work became more connected with the Hollywood film industry. While in California, Hilton was also host of one of radio's prestige drama anthologies, "Hallmark Playhouse", from 1948-1952. He married Alice Brown, a secretary at the BBC, just before they left for the United States in 1935, but they divorced in 1937. He then married