Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces

The Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces — Longji in Chinese — are the reason most people come to Longsheng, and they justify the journey. The two main terrace areas, Ping'An and Jinkeng (Dazhai), lie about 25 kilometres from Longsheng town and require a minibus from the car parks, then hiking on stone paths through the villages. The scenery from the upper viewpoints — concentric curves of paddy following the hillside contours, the valley floor invisible below, villages of dark wood perched on the lower slopes — is among the most striking agricultural landscapes in Asia.

The terraces look different in every season. Flooded and reflective in late May, emerald green through summer, gold at harvest in late September and October, stripped and stark in winter — each is worth seeing and each draws a different type of visitor. Staying overnight in the guesthouses inside the terrace villages, rather than day-tripping from Longsheng or Guilin, transforms the experience: the early morning and late afternoon light on the terraces is nothing like the midday versions, and after the tour groups leave by 4pm, the villages return to something resembling normal life.

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A story
The Longji terraces were begun during the Yuan dynasty (13th–14th century) and completed during the Ming. The terracing of the slopes was a response to the scarcity of flat agricultural land in the Guangxi mountains — over generations, the minority farmers carved a continuous staircase of paddies from the valley floor to within metres of the ridge. The highest terraces are at an altitude of 880 metres; the lowest at 380 metres. The entire system is still farmed by hand using the same methods as when it was built.

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