One of the world’s most spectacular natural attractions, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and the area known as Shangri-La (Xianggelila county), are threatened by dam-building plans on the Jinsha River, as the upper Yangtze is called. No final decision has been announced, but preliminary site work and feasibility studies are under way. A recent China Central Television documentary highlighted the distress of local people who had been told virtually nothing about a project that might force them off their ancestral land. As one local put it: “We beg officials at every level: Please don’t allow paradise on Earth to be flooded!” The following is a transcript of the program, Safeguarding Shangri-La (Shouhu Xianggelila), which was first broadcast on Sept. 18. The Chinese transcript, posted on the CCTV website [PDF] on Sept. 21, can also be found on the popular Chinese Internet portal, Sohu.com [PDF]. (English translation by Three Gorges Probe. Below, and at the end of the transcript, screen shots from the program.)

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1. Who is going to break the villagers’ rice bowl? Legend has it that Shangri-La is heaven on earth, a mythical, exotic, dreamy landscape. In Lost Horizon, American novelist James Hilton depicted Shangri-La as a wonderland in which people live in harmony with nature and each other. Late last century, people found a real Shangri-La in the Hengduan mountain range, where the Jinsha [upper Yangtze] flows in southwest China. Jinjiang town in Diqing Zang autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province, is the real Shangri-La in many people’s minds, where a multitude of minority groups, including Yi, Tibetan, Bai, Naxi, Lisu and Miao, have lived together for generations in peace and harmony. Recently, however, local people have begun to feel uneasy, upset by a piece of news. They have heard that a big dam is to be built on the Jinsha River so that water can be diverted to central Yunnan province and, in particular, to the provincial capital of Kunming. Roughly 100,000 people will have to move if the project goes ahead. Engineers are conducting surveys of the proposed dam site, and red marks [indicating the future water level of the dam’s reservoir] have already been painted on some walls, despite the fact that the central government has not yet approved the project. Although the scheme is still at the feasibility-study stage, everybody here is extremely worried, particularly because they have been given so little information about the project. Chezhou village, part of Jinjiang town, is one of the places that will be affected if the dam is built. Villagers set off together for the village office, hoping to learn more from village leaders. One of the villagers is 67-year-old Ding Changxiu. Her children are grown now, and have left the village for jobs in the county seat. It would be better for her and her husband to move there to live with their children, but Ding would rather stay put because she loves her native place so much.Villager

: We know nothing about the project. I’m wondering if the village leaders know anything about it. We old peasants deserve to know something about it, don’t you think?

Ding Changxiu

: I feel as if there’s a stone weighing down my heart. I was told we’d have to leave tomorrow! The whole village is on tenterhooks. I just met an elderly woman in the village who swore she’d rather die at home than be driven away.

Village leader

: Calm down, folks! It’s true that the province has proposed building a dam here to move water to central Yunnan. But whether we’ll have to move is not clear, because the project hasn’t been