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 (designer) James Hilton (designer) James Hilton is an English designer based in London. He co-founded the creative agency AKQA together with Ajaz Ahmed in 1995 and over twenty years grew it to become one the worlds most successful digital agencies. In 2014 Hilton left AKQA to found the experimental design studio AtelierStrange and custom motorcycle brand Death Machines of London. He joined the acclaimed design company Native as their Chief Creative Officer in December 2016. Hilton attended Southampton Solent University (then referred to as Southampton Institute of Higher Education) from 1990 to 1994. Hilton attended Southampton Solent University for four years.