• Song Zhangling Monastery 

	This Large Yellow Hat (Gelupa) Tibent monastery has returned from the ashes and destruction that swept southeastern Tibet in the late 1950s and 1960s. Songsenlin was founded in the 17th century during the reign of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, when the yellow Hat school came to full ascendancy in Tibet. it lies a few kilometres beyond the north end of town and welcomes visitors who behave respectfully.      The monastery once had as many as 1200 monks before , and now claims many hundreds, though most
	of these stay at home and work with their families , only coming together as a single body  on area festival occasions. In 1980 the second delegation sent by the Dalai Lama to investigate conditions in Tibet stayed in Zhongdian, and since then there has been steady reconstruction at this sacred site.

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• Benzilan
  

  	Benzilan , two hours by car from Zhongdian , is a pleasant town standing at 1968 metres on a narrow strip of land on the right bank of the Upper Yanthzi RIV , tucked between water and sharply rising hills . It is a way station on the main road north , halfway between Zhongdian and Deqen ; the road passed above the farms , wooden houses and small temples of the town . The busy strip of Sichuan style restaurants is constantly visited by cars , trucks and buses . Sichuan province and the village of Wake (Dongfent ) lie just across the water but can only be reached by a ferry .     Near the south of town , below the road , is Gochen Gompa , a small Tibetan temple with pretty murals . Walking north through the fields and lanes brings one to a stupa , always visited by old men and pious women , and another gompa .

   

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  • Deqen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture 
    
    

  Deqin County
  	Sequestered Three counties Zhongdian Deqen, and Weixi are under the jurisdiction of the Deqen Tibetan Autonomous prefecture, located in a delta where northwest Yunnan borders on sichuan and Tibet. The Prefecture is in the centre of a famous scenic area where three mighty rivers converge . Aginest the majestic backdrop of a blue smudge of snowy mountains, rivers winds their way through meadows ,
  Flying Temple
  forests extends as wide as an ocean, and there is an abundance of flora and fauna. Poets always liken the prefecture to
  	a paradise under heaven. The mysterious and bewitching Zhongdian County, where the prefecture is headquartered, is the setting for the Shangri-la, a hidden paradise is James Hilton抯 1933 novel Lost Horizon. A highway links Zhongdian to Kunming over a distance of 700 kilometers, and by 1999 an airline has been commissioned between the two places

  
  
  

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