A massive fire has destroyed an ancient Tibetan village known as Shangri-La (13 January 2014)

A massive fire has destroyed an ancient Tibetan village known as Shangri-La. Chinese authorties renamed the community years ago to attract tourists. And they had succeeded.
But now the village, which is also known as Dukezong, is mostly gone, consumed by a blaze over the weekend that lasted 10 hours and destroyed nearly 250 houses.
David Fundingsland, who's in charge of educational travels for the tour group Wild China, says the 1,300-year-old Tibetan village in China's southwestern province of Yunnan used to be a stop on the ancient southern Silk Road.
"This was a caravan route where tea from the south part of Yunnan Province, southern China, was sent by horse caravan into Tibet," he says. "And in exchange for the tea, the Tibetans would give war horses and other valuable goods that they were getting from India and beyond."
Fundingsland says the old town was a popular tourist destination because of its historic character. "Some of the old buildings go back 600 years. One of the largest Tibetan temples outside of Tibet proper is there. There's also a few of the old trader homes of people who traded tea on the old caravan route, as well as Tibetan homes and small temples."
There's no confirmed cause for the fire so far, but, fortunately, no casualties and few injuries were reported.
"From what we've heard, the fire started around one o'clock in the morning, and I've heard as much as two-thirds of the old town was destroyed," Fundingsland says. "This part of China in the winter is very dry, there were some high winds. Many of the homes have wood shingles on the roof and some of the homes and guesthouses use wood stoves or cooking stoves to heat in the winter, so they were very susceptible to fire."
A local vendor named Zhao told the state-run China news service thtat the fire "destroyed goods I'd saved over 12 years — worth 40,000 or 50,000 yuan ($6600-$8300)."
The area had recently been coming under pressure by developers, says Fundingsland, but the fire totally alters the debate about the need to preserve traditional culture versus the need to develop the economy.
"This fire may be a gamechanger," he says. "It's hard to know if people will come back once the town is rebuilt — if some of the Tibetans, the local people that had been living there for awhile, will move on to other areas away from the old town, or if they'll return."

Source:  http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-13/shangri-la-no-more-after-massive-fire-devastates-ancient-tibetan-village