The red rock of Gaoyiling

Gaoyiling, whose name means high chair ridge, is a Danxia landform, one of the red sandstone landscapes of the Nanling foothills in which bare rock has been carved into ridges, bluffs and terraces by long erosion. It sits on the line between Suxian District and Zixing City in Chenzhou, and the scenic area covers 50.5 square kilometres. The rock is the red earth of the south, and the name records the shape of it, a high seat of stone overlooking the surrounding country. It belongs to a cluster of Chenzhou's Danxia and water landscapes, listed together in the region's guide to its sights, so the red hills do not stand alone but as part of a larger stretch of the prefecture where the ground itself is the attraction. It is a landscape of exposed stone and coloured earth rather than of trees or fields, the work of water and time on the red beds. The name describes the shape, a high ridge of stone that the sources read as a chair, and the rock belongs to the same red-bed country that produces the Danxia landscapes of the south.

The water nearest Gaoyiling is Dongjiang Lake, the great reservoir of Zixing City on the upper Lei River, which the sources list among the main attractions beside the red hills. That lake, built between 1958 and 1992, is the largest artificial lake in central and southern China, some 160 square kilometres of water behind a hydroelectric dam, and it lies just across the country from Gaoyiling's rock. The two belong together in the region's sightseeing, the red stone and the wide cold water side by side. Gaoyiling itself is a dry landscape, its character is in the rock and the colour, but the water is never far, and the reservoir shapes the way the whole corner of the prefecture is seen, the red terraces rising from the country that runs down to the lake. The river Lei, on which the reservoir stands, is the same tributary of the Xiang that threads this part of Chenzhou. The reservoir is a power lake, its water held behind a dam built over more than three decades, and its surface is the largest artificial lake in central and southern China, a wide neighbour to the dry rock.

Gaoyiling is now a managed scenic area, rated a national AAAA tourist attraction, and its red rock has become one of the sights of the prefecture. Around it are ranged the region's other famous landscapes: Dongjiang Lake, Feitian Mountain, Fenghuang Island and the old village of Banliang, so a visit to the red hills is part of a circuit of the surrounding country. The area sits on the provincial road network, on the west side of Hunan provincial route S215, which brings visitors to the boundary between the district and the city. What was once a stretch of bare Danxia ground is now a named and rated attraction, folded into the tourism of Chenzhou alongside the lake and the mountain, and the red rock that gave the place its name is now the thing that draws people to it, a borderland of stone turned into a destination. The scenic area is reached from provincial route S215, which runs along its western side, and its red rock is now visited and photographed as part of the prefecture's wider circuit of sights.