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Photo: 瑞丽江的河水 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Monastery and former palace of local government
The Ganden Somtseling Monastery, also known as Somtseling and Guihuasi, is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery situated 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the city of Shangri-La at elevation 3,380 metres (11,090 ft) in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. Built in 1679, the monastery is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Diqing and is sometimes referred to as the Little Potala Palace. During the 9th century, high demand for trade goods on the path to Lhasa brought Naxi administrators, Han merchants, and Bai metalsmiths into permanent settlement in what is now modern-day Diqing. This transformed the town into a linguistic and cultural buffer zone where minority groups acted as economic intermediaries between the low valleys of Yunnan and the high Tibetan plateau.