The Protection of Culture Heritage of Shangri-la Area: Chinese Southwestern Minority Area entails an investigation into the cultural heritages of the Chinese South-western Minority Area (the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai and the Tibetan Autonomous Region) and the design of an effective scheme in protecting the cultural heritage of the Shangri-la area while developing the local economy.

The Chinese southwestern minority area is quite poor, and tourism in the Shangri-la area is vastly undeveloped. However, the tourism resources are unique and abundant, and there is great potential in the tourism market. As the Han Chinese —who share a different culture, customs and religion from the minorities— are the majority race and the primary source of tourism consumption in China, Shangri-la's tourism development will inevitably result in both positive and negative influences on the local cultural heritage. Especially the potential negative impact on the minority culture is of most concern in the research. The outcome of this research will contribute to the programme of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. This programme, funded by the China Scholarship Council, will be formally presented to the Chinese government. Therefore, its strategic advice will be supplied in the long-term development of the Shangri-la area and help preserve the variety of southwestern Chinese minorities and protect the essence of Shangri-la's cultural heritage.

Wen HUANG is currently a professor at the School of History and Culture of Southwest Minzu University. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral fellow in Economics at Sichuan University. She has worked as a research affiliate in the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA (01/2018-01/2019) and the Department of Anthropology, University of Boston, USA (09/2007-09/2008).

As a cultural anthropologist with a data analysis background, Wen Huang has a broad range of interests, such as resistance, heritage, development, space and place, disaster and well-being, as well as China, Tibet and the Himalayas. She advocates an interdisciplinary approach to the humanities and social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, history, human geography, economics and political science.