{"id":167619,"date":"2014-01-12T22:40:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T06:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=167619"},"modified":"2014-01-12T22:40:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T06:40:49","slug":"yunnan-town-razed-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Yunnan Town Razed in Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/ancient-town-yunnan-catches-fire\/\">fire that broke out early Saturday morning in Dukezong, Yunnan<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/01\/11\/dukezong-fire-tibet_n_4580829.html\"><strong> has destroyed much of the &#8220;old town&#8221;<\/strong> <\/a>there. From AP:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Photos and video footage showed Dukezong and its labyrinth of houses engulfed in flames that turned the night sky red.<\/p>\n<p>The fire destroyed about 242 houses and shops in Dukezong, dislocated more than 2,600 people, and torched many historic artifacts, the official Xinhua News Agency said.<\/p>\n<p>He Yu, a resident, said she woke to loud, explosion-like sounds to find the old town on fire.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fire was huge,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The wind was blowing hard, and the air was dry. I was scared because my home is a little distance away from the ancient town. It kept burning, and the firefighters were there, but there was little they could do because they could not get the fire engines onto the old town&#8217;s narrow streets.&#8221; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/01\/11\/dukezong-fire-tibet_n_4580829.html\"><strong>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/darkroom.baltimoresun.com\/2014\/01\/dukezong-tibetan-ancient-china-shangri-la-fire-destroyed\/#1\"><br \/>\nThe Baltimore Sun has posted a slideshow<\/a> of photos of the fire.<\/p>\n<p>On his blog, travel writer Chris Taylor, who has spent time in the area around Dukezong (also known as Zhongdian), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christaylorwriter.com\/shangri-la-flames\/\"><strong>writes that descriptions of the town as &#8220;ancient&#8221; are not accurate<\/strong><\/a> and that much of the part that burned had in fact been reconstructed as a tourist attraction:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The blaze is undoubtedly a tragedy, but Zhongdian\u2014which won a nationwide bid for the title of Shangri-la from the State Council of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) in 2001\u2014is home to little that is authentically Tibetan or \u201cancient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A reference to the lost-in-the-mountains paradise of James Hilton\u2019s 1937 Lost Horizon\u2014one the world\u2019s first best-selling \u201cpenny paperbacks\u201d\u2014Yunnan\u2019s Shangri-la was largely built after being rechristened as Shangri-la in 2001.<\/p>\n<p>[\u2026] During visits to Shangri-la, I heard repeatedly that monks at the \u201crenovated monastery\u201d \u201cworked\u201d nine-to-five, and were as likely to be Han Chinese as Tibetan\u2014preferably the former. I also heard that most of the heritage buildings that were still standing in 2001 were derelict, and attempts from certain quarters to rehabilitate and preserve them lost out\u2014more often than not\u2014to the imperatives of a drive to attract tourism traffic to the newly renamed, and suitably renovated old town. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christaylorwriter.com\/shangri-la-flames\/\"><strong>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fire that broke out early Saturday morning in Dukezong, Yunnan, has destroyed much of the &#8220;old town&#8221; there. From AP: Photos and video footage showed Dukezong and its labyrinth of houses engulfed in flames that turned the night sky red. The fire destroyed about 242 houses and shops in Dukezong, dislocated more than 2,600 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":167620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,14744,14745,14746,5],"tags":[5365,3091,7867,505,110],"class_list":["post-167619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-society","tag-fire","tag-shangri-la","tag-tibetan-culture","tag-tourism","tag-yunnan","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Yunnan Town Razed in Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yunnan Town Razed in Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The fire that broke out early Saturday morning in Dukezong, Yunnan, has destroyed much of the &#8220;old town&#8221; there. From AP: Photos and video footage showed Dukezong and its labyrinth of houses engulfed in flames that turned the night sky red. The fire destroyed about 242 houses and shops in Dukezong, dislocated more than 2,600 [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-13T06:40:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/cdt9.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"570\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"238\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sophie Beach\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@cdt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@cdt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sophie Beach\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sophie Beach\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/#\/schema\/person\/7f19e31b674d57a7dc20aab8e908c663\"},\"headline\":\"Yunnan Town Razed in Fire\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-01-13T06:40:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-01-13T06:40:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/\"},\"wordCount\":362,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/yunnan-town-razed-fire\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/cdt9.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"fire\",\"Shangri-la\",\"Tibetan culture\",\"tourism\",\"Yunnan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Culture &amp; 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