Shangri-La and the Imperial Imagination in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon

ABSTRACT

Since the publication of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933), Shangri-La has become a household term, applied to any peaceful idyll or retreat from the modern world. In the academic community, there is a growing consensus that Shangri-La is a purely unreal, imaginary place in the novel of a utopian genre. Nevertheless, how Shangri-La emerged and exists remains a mystery. Therefore, this essay explores how Hilton’s Shangri-La came into being in two forms: an imagined paradise in the East with exotic chinoiserie, and the cultural Other to the West, which is governed by imperialism in the western imagination in the wake of global expansion and colonization. The literary strategies employed by James Hilton in Lost Horizon make Shangri-La an incarnation that epitomizes the imperial ambitions following the demise of the British Empire, with its concomitant economic, intellectual and cultural decline.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Shambhala（香巴拉）is also spelled Shambala or Shamballa.

2. “The Peach Blossom Spring”(《桃花源记》) is also translated as “Peach Blossom Shangri-La.” This fable was written by Tao Yuanming, a Chinese poet and politician during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420). It relates the accidental discovery of an ethereal utopia, where all of the residents lead a peaceful life in harmony with nature, unaware of the outside world for centuries. The name “Peach Blossom Spring” has become a well-known Chinese term for utopia.

3. All page references to the text of Lost Horizon are to the Vintage Classics edition of the novel: Hilton, James. Lost Horizon. Vintage Books, 2015. Quotations from Lost Horizon are cited parenthetically within the text.

4. Daocheng County (稻城) is located in western Sichuan Province, China.

5. Shangri-La can also be spelled Shangrila.

6. Amnyi Machen（阿尼玛卿山）is revered by Tibetan Buddhists, as the highest peak of a mountain range of the same name in the southeast of Qinghai Province, China.

7. The Kunlun Mountains（昆仑山）are one of the longest mountain chains in Asia, running east through southern Xinjiang to Qinghai Province in China and forming the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau south of the Tarim Basin.

8. Karakoram is Chinese (Pinyin) Kunlun.

9. Thibet is the obsolete form of Tibet.

10. Michel Foucault elaborated how “the eye of power” was institutionalized and effectively inscribed in the social space during a conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot.

11. El Dorado is the name of a fictitious, mythical country abounding in gold, used by the Spanish in the sixteenth century.

12. A gold rush was a rapid movement that inspired an inrush of miners, seeking their fortune, in the nineteenth century.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant [number 22BWW054]; Zhejiang Province’s Leading Talent in Social Sciences Breeding Program under Grant (number 21YJRC13-2YB).