Luoping is around 3.5 driving hours east of Kunming in the Southeast of Yunnan Province. The area is known to be China’s largest rape flower agriculture area and end mid/end of February until early March, in a time window of around 3-4 weeks, the area transforms during the blooming season into a vast yellow sea. Rape flower fields are not uncommon, but here the impressive limestones as we know it from Guangxi and Guizhou dramatically add to the scenery. On one hand the mountains are steep and rough and hard to climb, on the other hand, seen from distance, they look very smooth and round and an absolute feast for landscape photographers. The timing is not exactly easy, as the blooming period can vary a little bit and often falls right into the Chinese New Year period which attracts lots of Chinese tourists and turns the area for around 7-10 days into a traffic Armageddon. However, the Chinese New Year varies more than the blooming period, e.g. in 2017 it will be in late January / early February, around 2 weeks before the blooming period. February sounds cold, but it isn’t. Yunnan’s lovely climate heats the days up to around 20-23C when the sun shines, only for the sunrise shots it will be a bit fresh but usually well above 10C. The area is not very well connected and to move between the different photo sites, a car is a must. On top of it you will require a guide who knows the area and the needs of photographers, as the timing to reach the spots on time for sunset / sunrise can be tricky. However, the full color range doesn’t reveal in the morning or in the evening, it’s actually the usually “bad” photo hours from late morning until early afternoon, when the dun shines most direct onto the fields, which offers the largest contrast between the blue sky and the deep yellow of the fields. Hence there are actually no bad photo hours in Luoping, great shots can be done throughout the entire day.

If you are interested in traveling with us to see the Luoping Rape Flower Blooming, you can find here more information. 

When I went to Luoping it was right during Chinese New Year and I took my family with me. I knew it would be difficult, but we had a hotel room secured and no time pressure, so we could adapt our pace to the circumstances. At home in Kunming most shops and restaurants were closed, the kids had of course no Kindergarten, so we told ourselves “why not”. For the drive which usually takes around 3.5 hours, we needed 5 hours but that was still quite okay considering the time of year. The last few kilometers were the worst since the new arriving tourists literally stopped at every yellow flower they saw to take a picture. Chinese have absolutely no problem to stop their car for a selfie on the Highway or to enjoy a view, even when driving at 100+ km/h with a 50 t truck in the back and even if it means their stop will affect a few thousand cars behind them (not to self: for next year mount a surface to surface missile system on the car).

The Hotels in Luoping are of low to medium Chinese standard but recently a Chinese 5* Hotel opened its doors (4* for Western standards on the hardware, 2-3* on Service) which means also travelers with enhanced luxury needs can go to Luoping. At this time my two boys were 1.5 and 5 years and had the habit of sleeping very late in the evening but also getting up late in the morning. So it was quite ideal for me to sneak away in the early morning at 5am and find sunset spots. The most classic vantage point for shots is around 20 minutes drive northeast of Luoping. It’s called Golden Rooster Hill or Jinjiling in Chinese and there is the Lingyi Temple built on its slope. Form there you can enjoy a great 180 degree panoramic view over the area. Taking pictures wasn’t easy though, as the contrasts form where the sunrises to the opposite side are quite big. Add the shadows from the hills that cover the fields and you will be happy with a camera that has the best possible Dynamic Range. Additionally I was quite late and when I arrived at the sightseeing platform there were already an estimated 300 other tourists and photographers on site with the best spots already taken. Hence there was no chance to use the tripod but thanks to the foldable screen of my Sony A77 I could shoot form the back over the heads of the front row photographers. This unfortunately forced me to crank up the ISO and that’s not the strength of the A77. Back in Kunming I was shocked to see heavy noise on my pics, even in shots with inly ISO 400. This forced me to heavily denoise in Lightroom and it was the time when I took the decision to finally get myself a Full Frame camera. More about that in another post. Anyway, in Luoping it is very important to get up very early for the sunrise that you can find a reasonable spot for the tripod. I recommend to be at least 1.5 hrs before sunset at the temple, and this under the week and not during the Chinese holidays! Since I am totally unhappy with my shots, I will be back in 2017.

 

Around 1 hour after sunrise I had to head back to the hotel to take care of my family and for the rest of the day we checked out the area around Luoping. We had to be super careful while driving, as the Chinese manage to break from 50 km/h to zero on a narrow countryside road after a hill and a blind right turn just because they spotted a flower they want to photograph. And until the girls with their pretty flower necklaces and princessy dresses posed with duck faces and their boyfirends / husbands finally pressed the shutter, it is not uncommon that a 500 meter traffic jam racked up behind them. So you need a little bit of patience to deal with the Chinese egoism and selfishness.

The next morning I decided to get up earlier and try to find a more hidden spot. First I drove near the Golden Rooster Hill where I was the day before and decided then to drive on one of the narrow roads into the fields. Thanks to VPN and Google maps I could find my way in the dark but it was very difficult to find a hill which was climbable, as the hills are usually steep, rocky and covered with bushes. Since I was running out of time and nearly ditched my car in a trench while trying to illuminate a hill with my lights to find a way to climb, I decided to find a spot which didn’t involve a hill climb. So I decided to move to Plan B and kept driving. After a few minutes 3 Jeeps crossed me, apparently full of Chinese photographers. I took this as a bad sign, as obviously they had a similar plan like me but seemed to turn around, so I assumed there would be a construction site or some other road block ahead of me. I reached a small village and the road was extremely narrow and I nearly missed the fork where I wanted to head more into hidden area. First the road look like a dead end but I tried my luck and managed to squeeze my car through some narrow alleys to get to the end of the village. I then headed for another 2km on and saw already a few spots that looked promising. I kept going to where I saw on the satellite images a bit a wider spot and I was right and could turn around my car. I decided to get out of the car, set up my tripod and make a few first shots in dawn.

My impression was that there were some better spots a few hundred meters back, so I packed everything back in the car, drove back and setup everything again.

Still not satisfied with the location and since there was still some time left until the sun came up, I drove back another few hundred meters, parked my car on the side of the rorad and ventured into the bushes. I finally found a spot that seemed okay, so I setup my gear and spent the rest of the time until sunrise with a Red Bull and a Nescafe. Then it started and I could finally shoot some.

I really liked the rock in the foreground, so I decided to include it into my composition and found out that rocks tend to move less than my toddlers while taking portraits.

I moved around the entire rock and then I suddenly discovered the “face”. I was quite happy with that because now I had a few Luoping sunrise shots which I havent seen on the internet.

A last shot and I had to pack up again, as my family needed to be fed

On the way back I stopped some more to take a few snapshots

 

On the way back to the hotel, the opposite lane was an 8-10 km long traffic jam, means there was no chance that I will drive with wife and kids after breakfast into that direction. However, I wanted to see the Jiulong / Nine Dragon waterfall which is apparently among the highest and most beautiful in China. I check the route beforehand on the map and assumed that the Chinese tourists will take the main road to get to the waterfall. My hope that the side road will be less frequented, mainly due to the poor map skills of the Chinese, fulfilled until around 2 km before the waterfall when the traffic jam began. My wife decided to get with the youngest one out of the car and walk for a while. In the meantime I manage to conquer a parking space very close to the upper entrance. First we had lunch and planned to go afterwards to see the falls, but the masses let us decide against it. We drove along the main road back to Luoping and since it was still early in the afternoon the traffic situation was bearable and just before the big rush started, so we had a more or less undisturbed drive back to Luoping.

For the next day we planned to return to Kunming, so as usual I got up to check-out a third sunrise location. This time I drove towards Shiwan Dashan (Thousand big mountains), which is located around 15 km to the South. The surroundings are much less spectacular because there are no limestone mountains anymore but the advantage was that except for two other Chinese photographers I was alone in the area.

I headed back to the hotel, packed our stuff and we managed to drive in around 3.5 hrs back to Kunming.

Luoping is during the Rape flower blooming definitely worth a trip. The views are absolutely unique and the contrasts for photography impressive. Culinary-wise the are is not really interesting, but they have some rape flower related specialties such as honey, oil, liquor etc. I discovers a vermouth liquor which was absolutely drinkable and might ba also quite interesting to cook with. One restaurant visit left us rather disappoint, We ordered a chicken soup for which we got a charged a horrendous 65 RMB (10 USD) and after a first tasting I recommended the restaurant owner to better rename the dish in “in oil swimming cold chicken bones”. No, for culinary reasons you don’t have to travel to Luoping.

 

Ideally a trip to Luoping can be combined with the Honghe Hani Yuanyang Rice Terraces and, time permitting, even with the Honghe Redlands. This allows to create in a realtively short time an impressive portfolio of unique landscape scenery. As mentioned, the perfect time window is the 3-4 weeks between mid February and early March and a trip should be carefully planned and a car (ideally not too big) is a must.