| Shangri-La County Zhongdian County · 中甸县 |
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|---|---|
| Chinese transcription(s) | |
| • Simplified | 香格里拉县 |
| • Traditional | 香格里拉縣 |
| • Pinyin | Xiānggélǐlā Xiàn |
| Tibetan transcription(s) | |
| • Tibetan script | རྒྱལ་ཐང་རྫོང་། |
| • Wylie | rgyal thang rdzong |
| • Tibetan pinyin | Gyaitang Zong |
| Location of Shangri-La County (pink) and Diqing prefecture (yellow) within Yunnan province of China | |
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Shangri-La
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| Coordinates: | |
| Country | People's Republic of China |
| Province | Yunnan |
| Prefecture | Dêqên |
| Area | |
| • Total | 11,613 km2 (4,483.8 sq mi) |
| Population | |
| • Total | 130,000 |
| • Density | 11.2/km2 (29/sq mi) |
| Time zone | China Standard (UTC+8) |
| Postal code | 674400 |
| Area code(s) | 0887 |
| Website | http://www.xianggelila.org/ |
Shangri-La County (Chinese: 香格里拉县; Tibetan: རྒྱལ་ཐང་རྫོང་།)is a primarily Tibetan county in northwestern Yunnan province, Southwest China and is the location of the seat of the Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
Contents |
The county was formerly called Zhongdian County (Chinese: 中甸县 Zhōngdiàn Xiàn) but was renamed in 2001 after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area. The local Tibetan population refers to it by the name Gyalthang (Tibetan: རྒྱལ་ཐང་རྫོང་), which is the Tibetan name for Jiantang Town (建塘镇 Jiàntáng Zhèn), the county seat.
Shangri-La has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dwb), with influences from the monsoon and the high elevation. Winters are chilly but sunny, with nighttime lows often dropping below −15 °C (5 °F), while summers are cool, with daytime highs of around 19 °C (66 °F), and feature frequent rain; more than 70% of the annual precipitation is delivered from June to September. Except during the summer, nights are usually sharply cooler than the days. Despite the dryness of the winter, the small amount of precipitation is generally sufficient to cause major transportation dislocations and isolate the area between November and March.
| Climate data for Shangri-La (1971−2000) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 18.3 (64.9) |
16.2 (61.2) |
21.5 (70.7) |
22.7 (72.9) |
24.2 (75.6) |
25.6 (78.1) |
25.4 (77.7) |
25.1 (77.2) |
23.8 (74.8) |
20.9 (69.6) |
18.8 (65.8) |
17.9 (64.2) |
25.6 (78.1) |
| Average high °C (°F) | 6.3 (43.3) |
6.7 (44.1) |
9.2 (48.6) |
12.5 (54.5) |
17.0 (62.6) |
19.2 (66.6) |
19.3 (66.7) |
18.9 (66.0) |
17.4 (63.3) |
14.7 (58.5) |
11.0 (51.8) |
8.2 (46.8) |
13.4 (56.1) |
| Average low °C (°F) | −11.2 (11.8) |
−7.4 (18.7) |
−3.6 (25.5) |
−0.5 (31.1) |
3.4 (38.1) |
8.4 (47.1) |
9.8 (49.6) |
9.1 (48.4) |
7.4 (45.3) |
1.3 (34.3) |
−5.8 (21.6) |
−10.6 (12.9) |
0.0 (32.0) |
| Record low °C (°F) | −23.9 (−11.0) |
−20.2 (−4.4) |
−17.5 (0.5) |
−10 (14) |
−7.4 (18.7) |
−2.1 (28.2) |
1.1 (34.0) |
1.0 (33.8) |
−3 (27) |
−11.1 (12.0) |
−16.5 (2.3) |
−27.4 (−17.3) |
−27.4 (−17.3) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 7.8 (0.307) |
14.4 (0.567) |
34.8 (1.37) |
32.4 (1.276) |
25.9 (1.02) |
80.2 (3.157) |
157.4 (6.197) |
151.3 (5.957) |
80.6 (3.173) |
44.5 (1.752) |
12.7 (0.5) |
4.9 (0.193) |
646.9 (25.469) |
| Avg. precipitation days (≥ 0.1 mm) | 4.2 | 6.6 | 9.3 | 11.1 | 11.5 | 17.9 | 23.2 | 23.1 | 19.3 | 10.1 | 4.0 | 2.1 | 142.4 |
| Source: Weather China | |||||||||||||