Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
planted in the itinerary was often meant to be humorous asides that
I would have elucidated upon during the actual tour.
The remark about Shangri-La, for example: I had intended to
follow that with a discussion about the various permutations of
“Shangri-La” notions. Certainly it is a cliché used to lure tourists to
any site—from Tibet to Titicaca—that resembles a high mountainous
outpost. Shangri-La: ethereally beautiful, hard to reach, and expensive
once you get there. It conjures words most delightful to tourists’ ears:
“rare, remote, primitive, and strange.” If the service is poor, blame it
on the altitude. So compelling is the name that right this minute,
workmen, bulldozers, and cement trucks are busily remodeling a ham­
let near the China–Tibet border that claims to be the true Shangri-La.
I would have brought up the link to geography as well, the de­
scriptions of the botanist Joseph Rock, whose various expeditions
for National Geographic in the 1920s and early 1930s led to his dis­
covery of a lush green valley tucked in the heart of a Himalayan
mountain topped by a “cone” of snow, as described in his article
published in 1931. Some of the inhabitants there were purported to
be more than a hundred fifty years old. (I have met demented resi­
dents at old-age homes who have made similar claims.) James Hilton
must have read the same article by Rock, for soon after, he used sim­
ilar descriptions in penning the mythical Shangri-La. Voilà, the myth
was hatched, delusions and all.
But the most interesting aspect to me is the other Shangri-La al­
luded to in Lost Horizon, and that is a state of mind, one of moder­
ation and acceptance. Those who practice restraint might in turn be
rewarded with a prolonged life, even immortality, whereas those who
don’t will surely die as a direct result of their uncontrolled impulses.
In that world, blasé is bliss, and passion is sans raison. Passionate
people create too many problems: They are reckless. They endanger
others in their pursuit of fetishes and infatuations. And they self­
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