http://www.wildchina.com/blog/tag/ethnic-minorities/

http://www.wildchina.com/blog/tag/ethnic-minorities/

Hilton is said to have taken his inspiration for Shangri-La in part from the writings of the eccentric botanist Joseph Rock, whose tales of exploration and adventure in remote Yunnan, Tibet, and elsewhere appeared in this magazine from 1922 to 1935. The irascible Rock led expeditions in search of exotic plants and unknown cultures. He wrote of sliding over the Mekong on a bamboo zip line, of attacks by brigands, of mysterious rituals and meetings with kings. Rock's flair for the flamboyant must have captivated Hilton, a British romantic who wrote 22 novels, including Good-bye, Mr. Chips.
Hilton also drew from another source, one much older than the writings of Joseph Rock. Shangri-La sounds like—and almost certainly is—a thin disguise for Shambhala, the earthly paradise in Tibetan Buddhism where there is no war and no suffering, and where people live in peace and harmony through meditation and self-discipline. In Buddhist texts Shambhala is said to reside beyond the Himalaya at the base of a crystal mountain, its inhabitants untouched by the venality and avariciousness of the outside world. For Hilton, born in 1900 and witness to the devastation of World War I and the Depression, this alluring Eastern legend would have had powerful appeal.
Mix a novelist's imagination with Tibetan mythology, add a dash of Joseph Rock and a generous helping of longing, and you get a nice recipe for Lost Horizon. Although the novel is rarely read today, the word Shangri-La and what it symbolizes—a faraway place of beauty, spiritual replenishment, and supernatural longevity —have long been part of world pop culture.
Of course the problem with the book is the problem with all utopian narratives: It downplays the negative but no less natural afflictions of humankind, such as jealousy, lust, greed, and ambition. In the end, this makes both the book and its unifying theme, Shangri-La, seem simplistic—precisely the opposite of the modern-day city of Shangri-La, a place that could hardly be more complicated or confounding.

In its previous incarnation, Shangri-La was Zhongdian, a 10,000-foot-high trade-route town located just east of some of the deepest and most dramatic gorges in the world. Three great rivers—the Yangtze, the Mekong, and the Salween, separated by towering mountain ranges and known hereabouts as the Jinsha, the Lancang, and the Nu—all sweep east of the Himalaya, then drop due south in tight parallel formation before pouring off in different directions. This was the remote region that Rock explored in the 1920s and '30s.

The diverse spectrum - 600 years of Korean ceramic

Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP

One of the most striking artistic oriental ceramic art arrives in Sao Paulo on June 17, Friday, on exhibit designed especially for MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. With more than 70 masterpieces from the collection of the National Museum of Korea, all unreleased in Brazil, the diverse spectrum - 600 years of Korean ceramic tradition explores the surprisingly bold and modern pottery that flourished in Korea during. Curated by Heagyeong Lee, the National Museum of Korea exhibition integrates the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Korean immigration to Brazil and runs until November 25 at the Museum of São Paulo.


Featured in museums such as the Metropolitan in New York and Museum of Natural History in Washington, pottery Korean occupies a prominent place in the genre for the first time will be shown in Brazil. In view of Teixeira Coelho, curator of MASP, "will be a unique opportunity to enjoy the manifestation of beauty in its purest state, despite the functionality that the parts may have shown."

In text presenting the show, he writes: "The creation of ceramic containers is one of the oldest ways of uniting the functionality of objects to the highest aesthetic and philosophical principles. Is it that clearly distinguishes the ethics of aesthetics, or linking the search for an appropriate and, if possible, perfect, the principles that should govern human life and behavior. "