Tourism booming in SW China's "Shangri-La"

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 ◆ Tourism booming in SW China's "Shangri-La"

The Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province, southwest China, hosted 1.24 million domestic and overseas tourists in 2001, an increase of 14. 3 percent year on year.

The tourists brought the prefecture a total of 883 million yuan (US$106 million) in revenue, up 24 percent, local tourism officials said.

Diqing has been promoting itself as "Shangri-La" described by British writer James Hilton in his book "Lost Horizon", published in 1933.

"Shangri-La" is said to be a Tibetan word for paradise, or an ideal place.

Local officials in Diqing point to the area's snow-capped mountains, lamaseries and people from different ethnic groups living together in a harmonious and peaceful way as evidence that their prefecture enshrines the features of "Shangri-La".

To attract more tourists, the local government has initiated a series of projects to improve infrastructure and tourism facilities, including highways, airports, hydropower stations, hotels and program-control telephone system.

To protect the ecological environment, the prefecture has focused on tourism development to replace the revenues it used to earn from the logging industry, which was banned in the late 1990s.

The efforts have paid off. The environment and landscape have become more beautiful, and the tourism industry is playing an ever-more important role in local economic and social development, according to the officials.(xinhua)