Part I: Songs of Shambala

Dusk gently settled over Shangri-La. A mist rose off the grassland at the town’s edges, shot through by the day’s last beams of sunlight, while in its handful of squares, music started up and men and women Gathered to dance. Standing in a wide circle, they moved through the same few steps but edged slowly clockwise, as if each person was a prayer wheel set spinning by pilgrims circumambulating a shrine.

There was Dancing in the Cobbled Square at the centre of old Shangri-La and dancing below the hilltop temple, at the foot of granite stairs. There was dancing in the new town too, in the wide square presided over by a Cultural Hall, and by dancing Shangri-La gathered every evening around the traditions that had animated it. It gathered around Tibetan Buddhism and trade, which had passed along the Tea-Horse Trail through its cobbled square. In the square below Shangri-La’s temple, dancers were reminded of the wisdoms that overcame desire, hatred, delusion, pride and envy – the five poisons – by a five-pronged vajra glowing white on the temple’s roof, in the light of a level sun. Shangri-La gathered around its communist institutions too, at the cultural hall, and in all three squares the music was arcade-game techno with Tibetan vocals. It gave the traditional dances an atmosphere similar to Shanghai’s outdoor aerobics classes, where office workers exercised at the end of the day

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