Luxury hotel chain Shangri-La announced that it would be coming to its namesake region in China September 9 — but is Shangri-La’s Shangri-La the real deal?

The chain has broken ground on a 230-room city resort in Diqing, a city in Shangri-La country in the Chinese province of Yunnan, set to open in early 2013.

The new low-rise resort will feature guest rooms that average 40 square meters in size and several Chinese and speciality restaurants, along with a health club, spa and beauty salon and indoor lap pool at the hotel.

Shangri-La was first described by James Hilton in a 1933 novel entitled Lost Horizon — and rather disappointingly for guests of the Shangri-La hotel, it was a fictional place, inhabited by mystical, almost immortal people.

Since its emergence as a synonym for paradise or the Garden of Eden, there are several areas that have renamed themselves Shangri-La — including the area where Shangri-La is planning to build its new hotel, which was known as Zhongdian County until 2001.

Visitors wanting to experience Shangri-La could do worse than the area formerly known as Zhongdian — it’s home to several stunning UNESCO World Heritage Sites and sits in the heart of the Hengduan Mountains — but some of the other claimants of the title could also be worth a visit.

Hunza Valley in Pakistan, for instance, is the area Hilton was visiting which is said to have inspired his creation of Shangri-La, and is popular with mountaineers, trekkers and hikers.

In Ted Vaill’s 2007 film Finding Shangri-La, the area and monesteries of Muli in Tibet are identified as another possibility.

For lovers of nature, Shangri-La need not be in Asia at all — Texas is home to the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Centre, founded by H.J Lutcher Stark who sought to recreate the world of Lost Horizon for himself.

Source: AFPrelaxnews – Photo: Wikipedia