View of Dukezong Ancient Town from Guishan in Shangrila 香格里拉
Guishan is a hill just outside the ancient town of Dukezong in Shangrila. Although the hill isn’t very high, relative to the rest of the town that is, it still is probably the best place to see how the town of Dukezong looks like from above. As it turns out, there is a place where you can view the town from the hill. It wasn’t exactly a viewing deck as parts of it seems to have been taken over by the local residents, this spot was still the place to be. From here you can see how uniform the town was. From the ground, most of the houses all look the same. Now I can say that even from above, they all tend to look alike.
The Modern Town of Shangrila is in the Distance
These types of towns are by no means unique in China, this may be due to competition or just plain culture. That may be the way, everyone has built their houses so it wouldn’t hurt to do the same, right? From here you can see that there are other hills which border the town. It seems like Dukezong Ancient Town was built in a good location and it is well protected. The mountains aren’t that high in this part of town which probably made it an ideal trading post as part of the tea horse trade.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/GuishanPark.kmz} zoom=19]