Top Ten Autumn Colors in China, Eighth Place: Ji Sha, Shangri-La, December 13, 2010, 20:38:14, Source: Xielong Journey www.680go.com
Shangri-La Mystery
A breeze before dawn swirls over the pasture, passes through the village, and drifts towards the forest. In its wake, mist flows gently, leaves silently detach from their branches, and fall onto a golden ground. A black eagle soars into the clear blue sky, flying eastward toward the sunrise. When the first ray of sunlight illuminates Mount Habo, Mount Yulong, and the Bao Ding peak of Mount Tianbao, Ji Sha is enveloped in an incredibly moving scene.
If the lush meadows of summer are her most vibrant moments, then autumn is Ji Sha's most colorful season of the year. At a glance, the meadows are adorned with soft hues of yellow and green. In the mixed coniferous forest zones at high altitudes, the needle-leaf forests display varying shades of green, while the birch and oak trees exhibit a mix of light and dark yellows. The rowan and maple trees are covered entirely in red leaves.
Ji Sha truly resembles the legendary Shambhala, where silence carries a power that touches the heart.
Ji Sha is the gateway to Tibetan areas in Yunnan Province, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, backed by Qianhu Mountain which stands at an altitude of 4,000 meters. On top of Qianhu Mountain, there are countless alpine lakes of various sizes, like turquoise embedded in a colorful forest. In Tibetan, Qianhu Mountain is called "Guan Yin's Thousand Lakes," the sacred lake of the entire Zhongxun region and the spiritual essence of Ji Sha. The water flows down through streams into rivers below, nourishing the vast pastures and farmlands of Ji Sha. People living below the mountain believe that water has life; they regard water as their mother. As the elders say: "The moon is the soul of water; without the moon, the water would disappear, and without water, all things lose their life."
In 2002, after Zhongdian County was renamed Shangri-La County, this small town intertwined with Tibetan and Han cultures suddenly became bustling, as if half the world rushed to see the legendary Eden. Ji Sha is dozens of kilometers away from the county seat, less crowded than the county town, but still visited by tourists. The villagers provide horse-leading and guiding services for them and specially assign a tour guide—not for commentary, but for supervision. The elders worry that tourists might visit places on the mountain that should not be disturbed, or urinate or wash their hands in the sacred lakes, polluting the water sources. At that time, two young idealists tried to work with the villagers under the holy mountain to resist the greed of developers and protect the last dignity of the sacred mountain—an essential existence in the world of Shambhala. The outcome of the story is obvious.
Years later, the young Don Quixotes have left, and an elder from the foot of the holy mountain brought his DV footage to Kunming to attend a rural imagery training session on cultural and biodiversity conservation. He smiled when he saw me and said, "I remember you; you've been to my home." That is the most common smile in Tibetan areas: simple, peaceful, and restrained. His filming theme was water, a reverence and humility for the water spirits known as "Lu," narrating the relationship between his people and the land they depend on. The human-headed snake-bodied "Lu" is widespread throughout the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, across all the large and small rivers and water sources on the plateau. No one knows the origin of "Lu," but she connects ancient times with the future, especially in today's era of successive ecological disasters. In Tibetan regions, if you ask a wise man whether there is a Shambhala that can accommodate the materialistic society of today, I think he will certainly smile without answering. The true Shambhala is not a "tourist attraction" nor is it for real estate development. She rejects greed, hatred, and ignorance; she belongs to those who revere and guard her purity and sanctity.
In late autumn, the first flock of southbound birds has arrived. Since the Pleistocene epoch, these birds have risked their lives every year to fly thousands of kilometers south to spend the winter. The wilderness of Ji Sha echoes with their lonely cries, but soon it will become lively with black-necked cranes, bar-headed geese, mallard ducks, and the red-breasted mergansers with sacred legends in Tibetan areas. By then, the winter snowflakes will also come, like clouds falling from the blue sky.
For related Shangri-La travel routes, please see Yunnan tourism.