Available Light Articles & News

THE RICE TERRACES OF SOUTHERN YUNNAN

In December 2008 we take a road trip to the rice terraces of southern China on the border with Vietnam; challenged by the road conditions
and the vagaries of the weather.

In the summer of 1979, when I was 12, my parents uprooted us from our home in Glasgow and bought a modest three bed roomed bungalow in Comrie, an idyllic little village on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. Having always been an “outdoor lad” I was delighted, and was soon to be found roaming the Strathearn Valley through quaint agricultural land, and fly-fishing for Sea Trout under a full moon with a new friend from school.

The River Earn was at the end of the garden, glowing fields of Wheat and Barley interspersed with grasslands full of plump dairy cows, all interlaced with mature hedges of Hawthorn and Wild Rose. Irregular stands of deciduous woodland still provided scope for rope swings, and on higher ground, conifer forest gave way to expansive hillsides of Bracken and Heather, home to Sheep, Deer, Red Grouse and Golden Eagles. It is a very fine place to have grown up.

The best part of thirty years later, I am still here, though not there, living now in the mountains of South West China. The school friend has also moved on, killed in his mid thirties when a car hit his motorcycle; for the careless driver, it was probably a life-changing experience, for Jonathan, it was life-ending.

In contrast to the desolate highlands of my childhood, China is a busy, frantic and often scary place. Subsequently, when we choose to take a road trip to some remote corner of Yunnan, the journey itself is an action sport. As we lock the house and pack the last of our things into the truck, the first drops of rain begin falling from an ominously heavy sky; truly Scottish weather in fact. Winters in our tiny corner of the Middle Kingdom are typified by day after day of clear blue skies, blinding sunshine and cold, dry nights. This year has been unusually damp, with one of the wettest monsoons in memory.

As we leave Lijiang behind in the gloom, I question the sense of setting off in such bad weather, it’s a thousand kilometers to our destination; the rice terraces of Yuanyang County near the border with Vietnam. However, we’ve checked the forecast and it’s supposed to be clearing in a couple of days. The road is a decent one, the route through Dali to Kunming popular, and with no railway yet (it’s on its way!) road freight is the only means of mass transport. Picture if you will the chaotic mixture of dangerously over laden trucks, seriously speeding buses, equally manic sedans and pottering local tractors, all convinced they are the sole users of the narrow two lane road winding through the steep hills above dizzying drops.

Less than half an hour from home we see our first accident, a small minivan has plowed into a tractor; it is obviously, and almost always, the fault of the latter. The road is lined on both sides with agricultural fields and small villages, the tractors pull out of side lanes without looking, every time, guaranteed. You can be bowling along and see one puffing towards the main road, weighed under with rocks or crops and you can see clearly if he persists in his chosen path, you’re going to hit him; glancing up, you notice a bus overtaking another truck on your side; you’re running out of options!

Play Station 3 Chinese Driver: Level One.
It is worth taking a time out to describe these tractors; they’re really quite remarkable. I’m not sure if prehistoric is an appropriate adjective, but they bear an uncanny resemblance to a dinosaur on wheels with a steam-driven piston stuck to its head! They’re all flywheels, belt-drives, little nozzles jetting boiling water or oil in copious quantities. They also have the pulling power of a four year old, and here lies the problem, when they have built up a puffing good speed, they are extremely loath to brake.

As we arrive in Hequing, a little over 40km and nearly an hour into our journey, additional hazards come thick and fast; motorcycles, bicycles, taxis, nonchalant pedestrians and kids as young as toddlers, just leap into our path from all sides at once. It’s mayhem, no; mayhem is too good for this! Unlike other road trips we’ve taken in the United States or Australia, where the occasional other vehicles are met with a cheery wave, this is non stop stress; relax for a fraction of a second and you may just miss seeing that child running onto the road, the motorcycle doing a u-turn without looking over his shoulder or the dinosaur tractor pulling in front of you from a blind side street.

PS3 Chinese Driver: Level 2.

We would see other accidents later in the trip, one of which involved a body bag.

Anyway, onward, or the article will be longer than the trip. The weather continues in the same grim vein and my mood deepens; I am very susceptible to gloomy weather and can get “quite down”, plagued by dark thoughts, apathy and ambivalence. Juanli suggests some music, but I can’t face that either. We pass Dali, a large town marking the start of the highway, and as we accelerate towards the permitted 120kmh the weather brightens and so do I, and once again begin taking mental notes, trying to drive and simultaneously observe in a journalistic manner.

For most of its 300 kilometers, the three lane Dali-Kunming Expressway weaves through low hills, terraced for crops and little rural communities. The farmers use the hard shoulder as a convenient thoroughfare, although, as in the west, pedestrians are forbidden, and we even noticed them standing in little groups offering goods for sale from outstretched arms as we pass. I slow to see what the fluffy bundles are, and see Pheasants and a Hare, then later an impromptu bird market, cages of lively and energetic songsters line the inside lane! The child inside me smiles as we pass a sign for the town of Cao Pu.

The Province of Yunnan seemingly overflows with ethnic diversity, different peoples; dressing in distinct costume and following their own customs inhabit villages just a few kilometers apart. As we speed east the changing house architecture announces a transition from one group to the next. In the region of Chuxiong the white painted homes each bear a mural on one wall, all quite different, and quite lovely; some are geometric in nature, almost akin to the Celtic Knot geometry of Western Scotland and Ireland, others, no less meticulous, are abstract animals; Owls, Cattle or Dragons. All quite distracting while overtaking in the outside lane!

For the first time in China we are traveling with the aid of a Global Positioning System, or GPS, as we enter Kunming and it begins telling us to take exits from the freeway that don’t exist we begin to call it Jim after Jim Carrey the actor, and star of Dumb and Dumber! We do eventually make it off and into Friday evening rush hour traffic, “oh deep joy!” Let’s get some context: Kunming is a large city by any measure, covering an area of 330km2 with an urban population in excess of 3.2 million, and by meticulous planning we arrive just as they all want to drive home. Jim steers us admirably through the bowl of spaghetti masquerading as the cities network of roads and we gain confidence in his judgments, or should I say “her” as it speaks in the chirpy voice of a teenage girl! So, when I am instructed to take the third exit from a roundabout I take it and rapidly realize I am on a road set aside for buses. I utter a suitable expletive and swerve into the bicycle lane and manage to nip down a side street. It gets better; as we tour the neighborhood looking for a hotel, our chatty little buddy lets me take a left down another narrow road. All the vehicles are parked facing us and all the cars are driving in our direction, even as we pass an oncoming police car, I realize, we’re on a one way street, going the wrong way!

By the time we check into our nights rest spot the familiar acronym is replaced by Generally Pretty Stupid. Little did we know our fun with Jim was only just beginning?

I am not a fan of Kunming, it has a disorganized, rambling feel to it, with little to distract the eye from the chaotic overcrowding. A small oasis is Green Park, where thousands gather daily to feed the innumerable Black-headed Gulls; a couple of Pagodas and a shapely bridge or two remind you you’re in China. To the south and west is Lake Dian, where we’ve had some pleasant birding in the passed, including my first photographable Baikal Teal.

By 07:20 next morning Jim is doing her best to get us out of town; 10km of very busy traffic, before again, we’re on a highway heading south. Three years before we’d made this same trip, but by bus; eight hours on an overnight sleeper from Lijiang to Kunming, a dreadful breakfast in a grubby noodle shop, then two more buses and a taxi to Yuanyang. In the comfort of our own car and a few little treats to eat, this should be a breeze, and indeed, all goes well and we stop after 116km to fill the gas tank and have some dumplings in Tonghai. With body and car satisfied we continue to Jianshui, another unidentifiable blot in a vast country.

The view from the car is decidedly uninspiring; the topography is one of rolling hills and endless fields; every square meter I swear has been cultivated, or being molested for some natural resource. Factories of the most chaotic form, like the crazy drawings of a fevered child, belch smoke, steam and who knows what else into the air. My diary notes, “Typical rural China, thoughtless buildings and ugly infrastructure.” My mood does not improve, nor does Jims route finding. In Jianshui we take a left turn from the main road and are thrown into Level Three of PS3 Chinese Driver; unlike the main roads, this is narrow, very windy, pot-holed and muddy, but the trucks, buses and other wonders of distraction are still coming thick and fast. We have no memory of this road.

As we climb into bamboo forest, the mist comes down to meet us, and soon we’re in thick, thick fog; visibility is only two meters past the bonnet of the car and the going is painfully slow. Ghost after ghost emerges from the gloom before us; a couple of kids walking back from school, a huge water buffalo followed by a shuffling, smoking farmer, or a house, necessitating a quick swerve to find the road again! And it continues like this for two hours, and if anything, the road is deteriorating until we’re on very rough ground indeed. The bus had not come this way, yet Jim is cheerfully unaware of our displeasure and confidently leads us onward.

Arriving in the small town of Yuanyang is a relief, although we’re both tired from the ordeal. As we descended the mist is left above, but soon our route leads up into the hills once more and we’re swamped. Little clusters of farmers by the roadside are selling Mandarin Oranges, so we stop and buy 7kg worth; they’re delicious and we’re soon spitting seeds from the car windows! The orange groves give way to Banana Plantations, the Palms heavily laden with ripening fruit. Suddenly, I am reminded very much of when we lived in Penang; the terrain, vegetation and heavy red soil. In southern China it all seams a little incongruous. At an altitude of 2000m we get stuck behind a long queue of buses, trucks, mini-taxis and bikes. The narrow streets of a town with no name are gridlocked by ignorant drivers choosing to park their vehicles blocking the road. At the end of the drive we’ve just had, my patience is strained and I get frustrated, angry and petulant. It takes us half an hour to negotiate perhaps 2km of town, and then out into the open, sculpted slopes of the rice terraces themselves.

The weather is still grim, but we’re in a clear layer between flowing fog below and heavy cloud cover above. The light is flat and lackluster, certainly not photogenic in any way. We’re familiar with the location after our previous visit, and soon find the crappy road to the small village we intend to make our base for the next few days. Jim has been having seizures all the while, insisting we take left turns or merge right when there are no roads to take; she’s having a bad day. Guaranteed Pure Shit!

Our memories of Sheng Cun were of a small village, with some new development juxtaposing with the traditional houses of the Hani ethnic minority; the place seems to have taken a downward turn. The main street is pot-holed and running with mud, black sows root through the prolific garbage, their saggy teats brushing the ground as they walked, and the seemingly perpetual mist has molded and stained the buildings with streaks of black and venomous green. The guesthouse we’d stayed at before was closed, but a big, new fancy one has gone up next door. We check in and pay 40rmb (US$6) a night for a double bed with an en suite bathroom. The room was barely large enough to turn around and the sheets were damp, but there was an electric blanket that we thought would be useful; it was also bloody cold with no heating.

We took a drive out to reacquaint ourselves with the shooting locations, some of them down little paths hidden in the vegetation, and not easy to find, especially in the pre dawn darkness.

Back at the hotel for an early supper we discovered the power was out, the combination of cold and damp were unpleasant, but we did share a romantic candlelit dinner! In bed by 7pm, wrapped in sleeping bags under the duvet wearing thermals and a hat, we tried to read by candle, but having exposed hands was impossible and we soon blew out the light and tried to sleep. I drift off but I’m cold and uncomfortable, waking often from troubled dreams and darting out of my cocoon to dash to the toilet. At some time the power came back on and the lights woke us. Around 4am I peaked out the window and saw billowing fog shrouding the streets, not what we wanted at all. For landscape photography, the weather, light and conditions are fundamental; not like studio photography where you have control of your elements and can let your creativity flow. Out here, Nature has to play ball too.

We dutifully rise at 6am and after dressing and packing, try, in a laughable exercise of futility, to navigate the 6km of terrible road in foggy darkness to the “dawn” location. In the dark, other ghosts drift towards the car, themselves shrouded and huddled, cradling something protectively in the hands; we buy five hot, hard-boiled eggs from the kids and eat them in the car! The locals have taken no time at all to devise numerous and devious means of exploiting money from the photographers who make their pilgrimages here; this is one I welcome, and admire the kids for making the effort to earn a little spending money. However, some of them have no eggs to sell, and just beg for money instead, in a whining, irritating manner, perfectly engineered to weaken the most solid of hearts.

A few other cars arrive and hopeful, camera-wielding tourists stand on the cliff edge peering into the gloom. It takes the heat of us though, as the begging kids move on to new prey. We speak with a couple of Belgians who were traveling through Yunnan, this was their third day and had only a few tantalizing glimpses as reward; they resolved to leave that day. Dawn was perceived only by a slight lightening of the sky, not real light, and no indication of where the sun was. We stayed there until after 9am, then turned the car and headed back to Shitsville.

We take a 10km walk along damp, sopping lanes, finding it all but impossible to remain positive in the deteriorating conditions; once again my spirits drop and I get moody and agitated. Neil Peart of the band Rush wrote: “I believe that how I’m feeling changes how the world appears.” It came back to me now, and I drift back through reminiscences of driving my open-top sports car in the pouring rain with a girl many years ago; we were young, happy, healthy and in love. The memory of the smile shining from her soaked face brought a brief one to mine now. Juanli and I keep telling ourselves that this is exactly the same start we had on our first visit; terribly misty the first 24 hours, then a divine clearing of the skies and one of my most memorable days with a camera.

Thinking back to that meteorological metamorphosis I fail to convince myself it’s possible again, and begin to formulate more negative thoughts. “Is landscape photography a law of diminishing returns?” If you have to travel a great distance to get there, or endure particular hardship or discomfort, once you have some good images, is it worth going back? The chances of a casual visitor being there to capture that once in a lifetime event, the one we all dream of, is remote. A local photographer, who’s on hand, stands far better odds. I take the thread further with Juanli and suggest it’s like a first kiss; memorable and never to be repeated. It can be good again, but it’ll never be the first time again!

But there was to be no revelation this day. High on a steep hillside however, I do come across a magnificent piece of quartz, it’s a decent size, maybe 10kg. Determined, I heft it onto my back and make my way slowly up the slope to where Juanli is patiently waiting. As she sees me lugging this specimen she shouts down: “Are you stealing that rock?” to which I reply, “No, I’m moving it.” She asks “Where to” and I say: “Home!”

We have another evening of power cuts and romance by candlelight; the place is quite busy with some Cantonese tourists and locals; it’s as if this is the posh place in town to go on dates! Stray dogs wander in off the street and beg at the tables, no one but us giving them, or the seeping mist a second glance.

The next day is a repeat of the day before; almost exactly, with one exception, it starts to rain; a heavy, persistent downpour with accompanying high winds. We eat our eggs quietly in the car, afraid to speak for fear of being too negative. We don’t linger long, and silently return to the hotel; the power is on and I manage to send off a few work-related e-mails from my mobile phone, a surreal connection to the outside world. The skies are still spitting as we take another walk, more to kill time than from any real desire to be out; a few women are working in the paddies, while their men folk sit around smoking. And they smoke with a conviction and passion that explains why there aren’t that many old men to be seen. I am sure the combination of the dampness that drapes over the area for over half the year, the cold air and the constant drawing on weed thins their numbers somewhat. In addition to cigarettes, they favor a chillum contraption; about two thirds of a meter long, with a small bowl pipe attached to the lower fifth. It is filled a little with water and they suck on it constantly; their belief that the water filters out all the tar and toxins is misguided.

As we stand on a cliff edge, balefully staring into the mist with heavy hearts and little hope, there is a sudden lightening in the sky to our left. Within a moment the suns disc can be made out and within another few breaths, a small patch of blue sky opens above us. The weather in this area is truly unpredictable and changes so quickly, from a total downpour in the morning to a clear blue sky, seems ridiculous. We hasten our pace back to the rooms for lunch and chat enthusiastically about where to go for sunset. I have a decent collection of “record shots” of the terraces from our last trip, and have no desire to redo them and focus my attentions on what the golden hours may bring.

We had hoped for some of the fog to linger in the valleys, or some high altitude cloud to hover above the fields in the west to reflect the sunset’s colors onto the wet paddies, but the weather was having none of it. We drove over to a new location for us, and not knowing the way, had to pay a local woman 30rmb to take us down through the village and along paths to a rocky promontory standing high above a remarkable vista.

In Yuanyang County there are 126 million m2 of terraced fields, a spectacularly large area, and they constitute surely, one of the worlds most outstanding manmade landscapes. And this I pondered, sat on my perch, watching the sun recede towards the horizon, as the Earths rotation carried me away to the east. 71% of the planets surface is covered in water, of the remaining 29%, nearly half is cultivated for crops and pastures, or built up urban areas. The rest is desert, tundra, ice or forest, and even much of the latter is man-managed or being cut down at an alarming rate. My point is the landscape is increasingly “artificial,” but we make judgments based on the aesthetic. Thinking back to my childhood in Scotland, the idyllic countryside was almost exclusively a manmade one; it is pretty because it’s mature and not over-stressed by too many people. Here in China, with its 1.4 billion people to feed, the land doesn’t enjoy the luxury of resting. When Scottish crofters were sent off by their landowners to colonize Canada and the United States, so the land could be turned over for sheep to graze the hillsides bare, it was an economic decision, and it changed the landscape irreparably.

The fact remains, with more people trying to make a living, so, the habitable parts of the globe will increasingly be used for production.

Three annoying kids begin to pester us, and I am dragged from my thoughts, probably just as well with the direction they were heading! They ask for money, which we refuse; the particularly cocky one picks at the dried grasses and threatens he’ll eat it if we don’t give in to their demands. We don’t, but he doesn’t eat the grass either! Eventually, an Ayi (Auntie) comes along and produces a crude sign saying we have to pay 5rmb each to photograph from this spot, we agree if she gets rid of the kids, which she does and we can shoot in peace.

The sunset was pleasant, but unremarkable, but we enjoyed looking over the valley and marveling at just how many years it must have taken to reshape it. The moon rose over our shoulders and we shot long into the evening in peace and quiet. With the arrival of a completely cloudless dawn, we’re aware we won’t get anything outstanding, and elect not to do the dawn location, but potter about instead, getting a few more record shots and avoiding being bugged by entrepreneurial hard-boiled egg sales kids. Packing up, we left the hotel at 9am, just as the streets were being readied for the weekly market. A dog has it’s throat cut outside a butchers and left to bleed into the gutter.

Descending again through the Banana and Orange zones, I asked Juanli if these hillsides were as attractive as those we had just left, she of course says no, reaffirming my judgments made on the aesthetic idea. The rice terraces of Yuanyang are a rarity indeed.

Jim tried pretty hard to lead us the same route back, but we persisted and ignored her directions, but got lost anyway; initially heading towards Vietnam until we took a new road through the mountains to the city of Gejiu, where the choice of paint color for just about every building; was bright pink. For the first two hours of our journey Jim just said we were lost! God, Please Stop!

Initially our plan was to head to an area known for it’s spectacular “red earth” another manmade landscape made famous by startling images, and once Jim had reasserted her place in reality and knew where we were, Juanli programmed the machine to take us by the swiftest route. It was still a long days drive ahead, and turned out to be one of the worst of my life. Instead of the highway Juanli promised, we had 250km of rural roads; mindless stretches of tedium punctuated by the most ugly urban conurbations China could muster. The traffic was predictably ugly too, too busy most of the time; getting stuck behind some gigantic, ancient truck spewing vile clouds of diesel smoke the consistency of ink from a startled Octopus. It was a muggy day too, lacking air, but we were forced to drive with the windows up and the AC off, the stench of chemicals creeping into our inner sanctum.

Hour after hour the stress mounted and a nagging headache began in my left temple; I was not chipper! The polluted haze stayed with us and it became clear by early afternoon that the “red earth’ location would not be spectacular under smog, so we decided to dash for Dali, and thoughts of being home the next day. This meant reprogramming “dumb ass” as she was now known, and we were soon on the highway speeding for the Kunming bypass and a quick “see ya later” to the “Eternal Spring City.”

Then, just as we’d entered Hell again, (Kunming) there was a barrier across the highway and we were forced to take an exit, which rapidly subdivided into a bewildering synapse of choice! Jim, with her chirpy teenage persistency was trying to get us back on the highway, so we take random exits and end up in the mother, father and Aunt Sally of traffic jams. At one stage, having darted down a side road to get out of the mass of honking, smoking nasty traffic, I end up in a military zone beside the airport; as one of the few foreigners driving around China carrying an impressive selection of camera equipment, I was keen not to get stopped by the plethora of soldiers patrolling the area. We did, after an hour, get back to where we started and the whole madness began again. For three hours we sat in traffic, Jim cheerfully telling us we were 110 hours 34 minutes and 12 seconds from our chosen destination (based on current speed!). In the end we managed a feeble 310km in 10 hours.

We had no choice but to stay the night in Kunming and head for home the next day, and that we did. We checked into the first hotel we could find and I cracked open a beer and tried to subdue the all over body shake that was going on, it worked! And after a decent meal and a few more shake suppressors, I felt ready for a good sleep! The view from our window was memorable too, as was the fact that on our fifth night in hotels, we finally had a working flush toilet!!

We set the alarm for 6am, keen to get out as fast as possible; the highway was 300m from our hotel. Jims first fuax pas as we set off was to suggest a left turn down a one-way street, which, this time, call me old fashioned, I ignored. She then leads us 12km northwest across town for another highway, which proved also to be closed. Falling short of ripping her from the dashboard and rewiring her, I took the route into my own hands, and used a map! After 36km of driving, without leaving the city and one hour forty minutes we finally get onto the Kunming-Dali highway. The relief is palpable; I relax a little and fall into the rhythm of the road. Unfortunately, the weather turned foul again and we drive in thick fog, swerving to avoid the farmers who strolled across all three lanes despite visibility in single figures!

It was still a 510km trip home, and still some Play Station 3 Chinese Driver levels to be successfully completed; so the sense of relief when we parked outside the house was very, very real. I look out my office window at our spectacular view and wonder if leaving this little haven is really worth it? Travel in China is all consuming; it demands your full concentration. The distances are vast, with the areas of interest far apart and the intervening land, shall we say, often not too appealing. Having said that, the rewards are great too; plenty of time to ponder our place in it all, so far from my boyhood playground in that pretty valley, to have choice and freedom, and most of all, life.