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) next eleven years were difficult for him, and it was not until 1931 that he had success with the novel "And Now Goodbye". Following this, several of his books were international bestsellers and inspired successful film adaptations, notably "Lost Horizon" (1933), which won a Hawthornden Prize; "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1934); and "Random Harvest" (1941). After this, he continued to write, but the works were not regarded as of the same quality as his best-known novels. Hilton's books are sometimes characterised as sentimental and idealistic celebrations of English virtues. This is true of "Mr. Chips", but some of his novels had