Travels to the South of Caiyun|Dongchuan Red Land

Dongchuan land—this time, it’s red

Text: Love beauty

Photography: Cricket Head

Layout design: Cricket Head

Yunnan does not have the high altitude of Tibet, nor is it as remote as Xinjiang.

It's easier to get to.

You can go to Lijiang and Shuhe to live a slow life;

Go hiking in Yubeng and Tiger Leaping Gorge;

Go to Haba to climb the snow-capped mountains, and go to Tengchong to soak in the hot springs;

. . .

The trip you want can always find the answer in Yunnan.

During the Spring Festival of 2021, after our family trip ended in Tengchong, we said goodbye to our families, flew from Tengchong to Kunming early in the morning, rented a car at Kunming Airport, and then went straight to the red land of Dongchuan, 148 kilometers north of Kunming.

The color journey of eastern Yunnan begins here.

2 hours and 20 minutes later, we were already in the palette of nature.

Large tracts of red, deep and shallow, spread out in the form of terraces.

Our car circled through the red soil and finally arrived at the center of the red soil in Dongchuan - Huashitou Village.

Go to the inn first. Although the inn here is called an inn, it is not comparable to the inns in Heshun Ancient Town, Tengchong, and has nothing to do with petty bourgeoisie. The inn in Red Earth is actually a farmhouse, run by local villagers.

We stayed in the best room in this inn, a king bed room with a 180-degree view. Sitting on the balcony, you can have a beautiful view of the screw field. The room fee is 151 yuan. Rooms without balconies are cheaper.

Do you want to laugh when you see such a simple (simple) balcony? The local flavor comes to you.

But it seems to be true. Standing on the balcony, it is indeed a "180-degree view." The graceful scenery of the red earth is unobstructed.

Our car rental is not expensive either: Chevrolet, 9 days, 1,250 yuan. After all, the cost of renting a car is 139 yuan/day. However, there are cheaper cars available.

So, don’t say you don’t have money to travel. Travel is sometimes much cheaper than you think.

The most important thing is, do you want to travel?

As long as you want, you can always find a way to travel that suits you.

The landlady handed us a guide map of the red land, "You can go to the direction of Luoxia Valley in the afternoon and come back here in the evening to watch the sunset. The places suitable for taking pictures of the sunrise are Damakan and Qicaipo, but now that The road is being built, so we can’t get through for the time being.”

I was worried about having no direction in the red land, and the boss lady just came to help me in the snow.

"You can eat firewood turkey at my place tonight. The chickens you raised yourself are delicious. Half a chicken is enough for the two of you. One chicken is too much and you can't finish it." The landlady made arrangements for us clearly. , I really can’t find any reason to say no.

I also had lunch at the inn. After asking the landlady to briefly recommend two side dishes, she went to the kitchen to work.

The landlady is a nimble boss, and it can be seen from her neat way of dealing with people that she already has a lot of experience in running an inn. It's a pity that due to the epidemic, there are only two guests in the inn.

The landlady is busy in the kitchen, and her two daughters are playing in the yard.

The two little sisters were laughing and playing, their faces were painted, their clothes were dirty, but their laughter was as loud and clear as a bell.

Children in the mountains are always more comfortable and free than those in the city.

Simple happiness is easily contagious. The cricket head who took the photo of the two of them immediately composed a poem: The deep courtyard is quiet, the small court is empty, the stubborn phoenix follows the wind, crazy, crazy, crazy.

After lunch, we went to Luoxia Valley first. Use Gaode to directly search Luoxia Valley and stop at Laolongshu.

The thousand-year-old dragon tree and the huge thousand-year-old fir tree were not seen when we went there because the old dragon tree was not on the roadside and we needed to walk a while to see it.

Frankly speaking, when we went to Yunnan, I didn’t make too detailed a plan. I only planned the route and roughly knew the characteristics of each place: the red earth in Dongchuan, the rapeseed flowers in Luoping, the mountains and rivers of Puzhehei, the architectural buildings. The ancient city of water, the terraced fields of Yuanyang.

Do you need too detailed planning when traveling domestically?

I didn't think it was necessary at the time and would rather leave a little more for the unknown. But now it seems that I regret it a bit.

Before getting the guide map given to us by the landlady, I didn’t even know about the attraction “Thousand-Year-Old Dragon Tree”.

In fact, it became famous in 2018 with the release of the movie "Wonderful West and East". However, I didn't watch the movie at the time.

Because I was writing this travelogue, I watched this movie online, and found it to be incredibly good.

The film is directed by Li Fangfang, Ang Lee's fellow student, and tells the stories of Tsinghua students in four different eras.

The appearance of Lao Nagarjuna was mainly in the story starring Wang Leehom. During the Anti-Japanese War, he was born into a wealthy family and was a student of Tsinghua University. He gave up his writing and joined the army, became an air force pilot, and finally died in the air battle against Japan.

There were two other appearances, in a 1960s story starring Zhang Ziyi and Huang Xiaoming.

In fact, the entire filming location for the Anti-Japanese War story starring Leehom Wang should have been on the Red Earth.

" I hope that when you are confused, you will firmly believe in your preciousness, love what you love, do what you want, follow your heart, ask nothing about the West and the East, just ask yourself." Oh my god, this is the last sentence of the movie. Are the lines really not given to me?

If, before we went to Red Land, I had seen this movie, I would definitely look for this tree.

But at that time, because parking was inconvenient, we didn’t think much about it and just gave up, “Isn’t it just a big tree?”

You know, we just visited Manling Village near Ruili a few days ago and admired the "lone tree forming a forest", a large forest grown from one tree. How could we take this old dragon tree on the red earth too seriously? thing?

If you can see it along the way, just take a look; if it's not convenient and you have to walk to find it, forget it. This kind of casual mentality at that time makes me regret it extremely now.

Following the navigation, we went directly to Luoxia Valley. To be precise, it should be the viewing platform where Luoxia Valley was photographed.

Luoxia Valley is a red clay plateau in the valley, surrounded by mountains.

The place lives up to its name, like a piece of red cloud falling over the ravine.

Red terraces, layer upon layer, surround a white village in the middle. However, there are many ravines between our location and Luoxia Valley, so we cannot reach it directly.

Cricket Head said that sometimes, the best viewing position is from a distance. If you enter the village and are inside, you won't see this sense of hierarchy.

Return and go to Luosi Bay.

Obviously there are both Gaode navigation and guide maps, but Luosi Bay made it easy for us to find it.

It was wrong to follow the navigation; we saw a sign on the side of the road that said "Luosi Bay Parking Lot". We drove there, only to find that the navigation indicated another direction.

Even if you ask the locals, different people will point you to different directions. Perhaps, to them, these winding terraces are all snail fields!

The aunt who charged us 10 yuan for parking said firmly that this is Luositian.

Fortunately, when we were looking for the snail field, we were already in the scenery.

Finally, return to the Wafang Liangzi where the inn is located.

The inn specially built a glass-floor viewing platform facing the terraces.

I have to say that the young couple who opened the inn actually have great ideas. If the glass floor of the observation deck was not so dirty, it would be a different view from another angle.

After searching around, the best viewing spot turned out to be the inn where we stayed: Kunming Caiyunxuan Theme Inn.

Red, green, large patches of color. In life, it always feels tacky to match up like this.

But here, nature mixes it with at will, paints it at will, intersperses it at will, but it still looks good no matter what.

However, for a mobile phone addict like me, when shooting with a mobile phone, there is basically nothing to do between a long shot, a close shot, and a medium shot.

Cricket Head was taking pictures with a drone while I waited. It was windy, cold, and boring.

When I see the photos taken by the drone, I can only sigh, no matter how long I wait, it is totally worth it.

In fact, with drones, there is no such thing as a snail field or a tile-roofed house.

In our eyes, they all have only one name: Red Earth.

However, the landlady said that the most beautiful seasons of the red land are May and September: in May, the highland barley turns yellow, but the potato seedlings are still green; in September, the red land has a good harvest, with green highland barley, golden wheat, and white rape flowers. The most colorful.

We are now in late February, and we only see red and green, and it is so beautiful. It is hard to imagine how beautiful it would be with more colors.

It's okay, come back at another time next time. I never think that just visiting a place once is enough.

The scenery is divided into four seasons, and the heart is also divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Different times, different moods, even if you go to the same place, you will often have different feelings. Just like these two little girls who love to laugh, make trouble and cry.

This night we had wood-fired turkey. In the huge iron pot, potatoes, braised chicken nuggets were tumbling, and the firewood in the stove crackled. In order to prevent it from sticking to the pan, you have to stir-fry it with a spatula from time to time.