The gully.
Luoxia — "the fallen gully" — is exactly what it says: a block of hillside that slumped, terraced itself in the slump, and kept being farmed. From the ridge above, the composition is a amphitheatre of red walls stepping down to a green-and-gold floor, and the first light runs along the strata like a fuse. It is the red land's signature image, and it is working farmland, not a monument.
The week's colour.
The gully's floor changes with the ploughing. Fresh-turned earth is red; potato ridges come up green; buckwheat turns the block gold; harvest strips it brown again. The photograph you came for is the one this week's rotations made — which is why the drivers here carry field reports the way skiers carry snow reports, and why a fixed itinerary photographs last month's landscape.
The procedure.
Arrive pre-dawn, in cold, with a headlamp, and stand where the light will be rather than where the crowd is. The first hour does the work: the shadow line drops down the gully walls, the red saturates, and the planted floor catches fire for about twenty minutes. Then it is a field again, and the farmers start their day beside you — which is the reminder the whole landscape runs on: the palette belongs to the plough.
Keep reading
The canola weeks
The water keepers
The flower market