In the frigid inkiness of early morning on Jan. 11, 2014, a space heater allegedly ignited a window curtain in a hotel in the Old Town of Xianggelila — the very hotel in which Professor of Justice & Policy Studies Jerry Joplin had stayed in the spring of 2013 while directing Guilford College’s Southwest China semester abroad program.
The flames spread from wooden-shingled rooftop to rooftop, and over the next 10 hours, at least 220 old wooden buildings in the Old Town had been destroyed by the ensuing inferno. Fire department crews demolished other buildings in an effort to contain the blaze. More than two-thirds of the Tibetan town’s beautiful homes, shops, restaurants, hotels and cultural centers are gone.
The good news is that nobody died in the fire. Images of fresh snow fallen on the blackened, charred remains of the buildings, some of which had centered on pine pillars a meter in diameter, leave the viewer dumbfounded as to how everyone had escaped the winter night’s conflagration. Nevertheless, countless antique pieces of tantric Buddhist art, books, families’ valuables, investments in refitted hotels, hopes and dreams, and venues of memories are utterly gone.
The Old Town will doubtless be rebuilt in order to satisfy the stunned tourist market, but the town will be forever changed. It will be interesting and painful to see how the economics of reconstruction play out and whether the local Tibetan and Naxi house owners or their Han Chinese lessees will most benefit from whatever assistance the local government will decide to proffer.
Contrary to some news reports and YouTube video commentary, the Old Town was not “ancient,” per se. Only a handful of structures, including our students’ classroom building, were more than a hundred years old, and much of it had been redesigned and refurbished in the past decades without much attention to architectural tradition.
Yet it was a lovely town indeed, with cobbled streets, no motor vehicles, labyrinthine back alleys and barking dogs, stray cows and disco lights both, with gentle views over the wooden buildings to the seasonally snowbound peaks surrounding the valley. The community is, for now, shattered.
The Old Town of Xianggelila (Shangri-la, or Tibetan: Dukedzong) in the Tibetan region of rGyalthang, in Yunnan Province of China, has for many years been the home base of Guilford’s Southwest China semester abroad program. It has been in this Old Town wherein our students and professors have lived, studied and built deep friendships. Dozens of Guilford students and alumni will fondly remember the Old Town Square (Sifangjie) with its dancing and its barbecue (shaokao) vendors, The Raven, Arro Khampa and the Rebgong noodle restaurant across the street and the Everest antique shop. All are now ashes.
Guilford’s study abroad program will endure. We will return this coming summer for a seven-and-a-half-week, 12-credit version of the program, replete with homestays in Geza village (which is doing just fine) and an overland camping expedition to the nomad horse festivals of the high grasslands. We will redesign a few aspects of the program, including locating new housing and classroom space in Xianggelila for students and faculty. Yet we will return and reinvest ourselves in this community so full of friends and kindness. Like the town, our program will persevere.
I write this piece to inform our community about the horrid destruction of a distant but personal part of our Guilford culture and community. I cannot begin to recount the myriad memories of Guilford students at their very best in the heart of this town that now lies in cinders. Our friends have been profoundly affected, and our hearts are with them, and — pardon the potential pun given the recent flames — I hope we can hold them in the light.
Applications for this summer’s program are available in the Office of Study Abroad in King Hall. If you have any questions about the study abroad program or about how best to assist folks in need in Xianggelila, please feel invited to contact Eric Mortensen: [email protected].
Chunjie Kuaile. Losar Tashi Delek. (“Happy New Year,” in Chinese and Tibetan.)
Eric Mortensen and Dasa Mortensen (Ph.D. candidate in Chinese History at UNC Chapel Hill) designed Guilford’s study abroad program in Southwest China and have led over 40 Guilford students to the region.
