Chishui

Lia spotted the name on a map first, weeks before we ever set foot in Guizhou: Chishui, “Red Water River.” She liked the sound of it, and once we got there I understood why the color matters so much. The Chishui River really does run reddish, stained by the sandstone it cuts through, and for two days we followed it downstream past canyon walls the color of dried brick, glowing harder every time the sun broke through the clouds.

We’d come mostly for the waterfall, and it did not disappoint. The Chishui Great Waterfall is the largest Danxia-landform waterfall in the world, more than 80 meters across and dropping 76 meters into a churning pool, and no photo I’d seen prepared me for the sound of it. We climbed down the viewing platforms until the mist reached us, and I remember Lia laughing because neither of us had thought to bring a rain jacket for what was, technically, a sunny afternoon.

What surprised me more, honestly, was the forest. A short drive from the falls, we walked into the Chishui Cyathea National Nature Reserve, where tree ferns taller than our guesthouse rooftop grow in dense, dripping groves. These Cyathea have barely changed since the age of dinosaurs, and walking under their fronds, with the red cliffs looming behind them and the river murmuring somewhere below, felt genuinely prehistoric — the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’d wandered onto a different planet without leaving Guizhou.

We ate dinner that first night at a tiny place near the river, bowls of noodles with a chili oil so bright red it matched the canyon outside, and I kept thinking how everything in Chishui, food included, seemed to share that same deep rust hue. It’s a small, strange thread running through the place, and it’s stuck with me since.

When to go: We went in spring, and I’d recommend either that window or autumn — March through May or September through November — when the weather stays mild and the waterfall runs at its clearest and fullest.