As the development in the pristine site of Shangri-la hastened, what seemed to be like a real world example of the paradise in James Hilton's book quickly disappeared. In order to accommodate a growing number of tourists, any area with a nice view was immediately interrupted by hotels and recreation centers.

The vast tropical forests turned into a site of rubber plantations. China chose this region for producing rubber because rubber trees cannot live in other regions. (In the second picture, you can see local Yunnan people working in the rubber plantations.) They are too cold. Opening up the dense rain forests and re-filling them with a single plant species severly undermined the crucial diversity of the flora, as well as the habitats of the diverse animals that live there.  Not only Shangri-la, but the entire region of the Southwestern Yunnan province came under massive development and tourism.

What should be done to restore this site, which harbors the most diverse spectrum of nature in all China? How the Chinese government view Shangri-la must be changed first. Shangri-la is the Tibetan word for "The sun and moon in my mind". Whether the Chinese officials see Shangri-la as their own sun and moon or not will be the only solution to bring the lost paradise back.