Yibin hong shan fei li

Hongshan Feili in Yibin, designed by AOBO Landscape for Sichuan Hongshan Group and completed in 2021, is organized around a Yangtze River jade narrative. Yibin, the first city on the Yangtze where three rivers meet, has for millennia carried a poetic tradition; the design takes the great river as cultural text and jade as its cue, drawing the river's openness, the mountain's fortitude and the wood's inner warmth into a contemporary poetic space. The long, narrow site exploits a 7.4-meter elevation difference through stepped terraces that link the great river and the jade, dividing the route into chapters in which a gentleman or lady seeks jade. Each chapter is enriched by philosophical elements of mountain, water, jade, stone, pine and grass, and the winding route is punctuated by pavilions, gates and walls that create repeated discoveries. The journey opens in Search and Contemplation through flowering woods, then reaches the first gleam of jade, where the view opens over a cold-blue expanse. Distant view of dark mountains shows a lone pine on a cliff; close view of quiet green descends stepped terraces through clouds and pines. Listening to flowing sound places the visitor beside a waterfall, mist and shallow water; the final rite, mist-fall, reveals the uncut jade itself on a small island of still water, moist wood, luminous mountain and living water. The project closes with the idea that having sought the jade, life itself becomes beautiful.