Editor’s note for June 5, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader:
“Shangri-La” must be amongst the most-abused literary coinages in the English language.
It is the name given by English author James Hilton to a fictional valley in the Kunlun mountains in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Shangri-La is described as a place of happiness and spirituality whose residents live long lives, unaffected by the crass getting and spending of the outside world.
In 1971, the late Malaysian-born tycoon Robert Kuok (郭鶴年 Guō Hènián) opened the Shangri-La hotel opened in Singapore, the first of what is now a global chain of expensive luxury accommodations still controlled by his family conglomerate.
The Shangri-La Dialogue, where spies and generals gather annually in Singapore, is named after the hotel, where it has been held since 2002.
In 2002, the town of Zhongdian in Yunnan decided to rebrand itself as Shangri-La to encourage mass tourism.
Our Word of the Day is: Shangri-La (香格里拉 xiāng gé lǐ lā).
