The Avalanche (Spoilers)

I sympathize with your reaction to this scene. The Tibetans would never have fired their guns in such conditions; and having them mistreat the English that way makes them look crass. In the book, the author Hilton has the Chinese character Chang tell Conway that the Tibetans who have lived in Shangri-La (the monastery, not the valley below) have not done very well there. I suppose that in the 1930s, not many Westerners objected to such portrayals.

Five years late for the response, but I'll forge ahead anyway.

Excellent point about the avalanche foolishly being caused by natives who should have known better than to fire guns under those conditions. The avalanche itself might have been shown realistically under more probable conditions as you mentioned.

At this point, I'm going to paraphrase a discussion from the original James Hilton novel. The unnamed narrator and the writer Rutherford had met much earlier, and discussed the strange experience that Rutherford had had of meeting up with an amnesiac Conway in China. Conway had regained his memory and jumped ship, later sending Rutherford a letter thanking him for his help, and saying that he was going on a long journey.

The men talk about the arrival at a Chinese mission hospital of Conway with a Chinese woman who had somehow managed to bring him there.She died shortly after her arrival.

Rutherford and the narrator speculate on what might have happened in between the party leaving Shangri-La and Conway's arrival at the mission hospital.

Here's where I attempt to reconstruct the dialogue from the novel:

" I feel we can guess at some sort of tragedy" said Rutherford. " The hardships of the journey alone would have been perfectly appalling, not to mention the possibility of bandits or even treachery among the escorting party. It seems tolerably certain that Mallinson (George Conway in the film version) never reached China. "

The two men discuss possibilities of whether Conway could have found Shangri-La again, and whether the place even existed. If one chooses not to believe Conway's story, "...one has to question either Conway's veracity or his sanity."

Rutherford concludes by telling the narrator one strange fact about the end of the story at the hospital. The woman Lo-Tsen, who Mallinson had fallen in love with, offered to help them leave the valley. Conway insists that she's 150 years old, or thereabouts. When Mallinson and Lo-Tsen convince Conway that the story about longevity and seeming youthfulness was not true, a disillusioned Conway goes with them.

Rutherford tells the narrator that he spoke briefly to a doctor at the mission hospital, and asked whether the Chinese woman who had brought Conway there and died shortly thereafter, was young.

"Oh no" said the doctor, "She was most old; most old of anyone I have ever seen."

The novel ends with the unanswered question as to whether Conway will find his way back to Shangri-La. It is a very somber and poetic ending to a strange and fantastic novel. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Frank Capra film version.