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From Our Own Correspondent: Denmark and China

Denmark and China

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Denmark and China

Alan Johnston with personal insights from correspondents David Goldblatt and Kieran Cooke.

Alan Johnston presents personal insights from correspondents abroad. Today, David Goldblatt on Denmark's quietly practical approach to squatting and Kieran Cooke on Yunnan's rather ersatz Shangri La.

Alan Johnston introduces personal insight and experiences from correspondents abroad. 

In today's edition, David Goldblatt finds that Denmark's egalitarian and pragmatic approach helped turn an outlaw squatter colony into one of the country's main tourist attractions, while Kieran Cooke in Yunnan visits one contender for the title of Shangri La - but learns that it has a little less history than meets the eye.

Small and sociable

Close to the centre of the Danish capital, Copenhagen, there's a very different sort of neighbourhood. It's an old hippy commune called Christiania: a non-conformist island of alternative thinking in the heart of the city. As one of its residents said: "It's not a perfect society, but it doesn't have to be."

The area has just won a long legal battle to secure its status as kind of semi-autonomous enclave. David Goldblatt has been finding out how it first managed to to establish itself, way back in the Seventies.

The earthy paradise that never was

The words Shangri La have become shorthand for the idea of an earthly paradise, a sought-after escape from the pressures of real life. The idea of such a refuge only grew more seductive in the 20th Century, as novels, films and fantasies purported to describe places just like that, which could only be reached by intrepid and well-funded travellers.

Many places claimed they were 'the original' Shangri-La, but as Kieran Cooke found in the Yunnan region of China, anchoring such a nebulous concept to a real place was bound to disappoint.

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