This Way to Shangri-La

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So what is it about? And what is it about this area that inspires dreams of paradise? By all accounts, Lijiang in Rock's day was a lyrical place, with babbling brooks and well-trimmed flower gardens. In the '40s, it was described as a 'paradisiacal valley' by Russian traveler Peter Goullart.

I begin to see signs of Hilton's era in the cobbled alleyways of the city's old town. Here Lijiang is a medieval maze of curved roof shingles and smooth flagstone streets, lined with rickety wooden houses and arched stone bridges. Situated at a lofty 7,800-plus feet, the town is framed by the Himalaya-style backdrop of the looming Jade Dragon Snow Mountains to the north. Clear-running streams thread through the town as in Hilton's book. There are canal-side restaurants just like his 'painted teahouses by the stream.'

I decide to ponder the matter further at a canal cafe called Mama Fu's in the heart of old town. Lounging beneath a floppy umbrella the size of a satellite dish, I sip strong Yunnan coffee while ageless Naxi women pass by in traditional blue capes and not-so-traditional Mao caps. They move down the street in packs, lugging baskets of produce and squealing piglets to market. Mama Fu's is run by Mama and her 20-year-old daughter, Zhao Xun Mei-better known as 'Kitty.' Like all the other women I've seen in town, Kitty is bustling around, hard at work.

'In Lijiang, women work and men rest,' explains Kitty, second in command at the restaurant after working at a paper mill for two years. In the matriarchal Naxi culture, she points out, it's the women who hold economic power and control all aspects of trade and commerce. Men are generally the child-minders, gardeners and musicians.

Kitty's father joins us as if on cue, carrying the requisite birdcage. Bird-keeping is almost a full-time occupation for many Naxi men, who pamper their songbirds shamelessly with daily walks and loving baths in the river. 'They walk their birds, go to the park, play mah-jongg-but the women are always working,' says Kitty, after greeting her father.When Kitty and I stroll to the market square, I can see what she means. The benches are full of lounging men, while, a few feet away, Naxi Bai women lug heavy loads of bricks, cement and stone. It's becoming clear that Lijiang is a paradise of sorts-at least for men.

For better evidence of Xuan's lost horizons, though, I need to head deeper into the hills of Yunnan, to mountaintop monasteries and isolated valleys of Rock and Hilton vintage. I hop on a bus heading north for Zhongdian, the last main town before the Tibetan border. The packed vehicle descends into the Lijiang Valley, carving through a patchwork of shimmering green fields dividing tiny villages bustling with tractors, bullock carts and bicycles. Beyond the valley, hills of red clay and rock rise into snowcapped peaks covered in fir trees. We climb onto an upper plateau peppered with herds of grazing yaks. Bare wooden farmhouses rush past, their windows framed in a riot of bright colors. Prayer flags flap in the wind.

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