Longji Terraced Fields

In the midst of majestic natural beauty, azure streams teaming with fish and mountains that stand imperiously over the landscape, the peculiar Longji terraced fields can be found. My friends and I spent two days exploring in awe this exemplar of agricultural ingenuity from which the ethnic minority people whose ancient hands over hundreds of years have formed these steps from the mountainsides have reaped not only annual bountiful harvests but also a new revenue stream by tapping the lucrative tourist market. Indeed, the unique blend of simple, cultural continuity and monetized avarice was on full display the moment we alighted from our van, what with elderly women dressed in full ethnic minority regalia soliciting eagerly the chance to act as our sherpas, who would guide us along the trails and carry our belongings on their backs. Calvin and Irene gladly took this opportunity to lighten their load while enriching the coffers of a people who, assiduous farmers they may be, now enjoyed the virtues of satellite television and pop music.

We stayed during the languorous season when neither harvesting nor planting affected the landscape. The terraces consequently stood in denuded silence as if napping peacefully like a silly, sleeping dragon at its cave; and along the beast's back we walked, towards our hotel at the farthest reaches of the sprawling, rurally manicured campus. Our walking caravan traversed many diminutive, verdant fields, whose lack of prodigious vegetation has already been noted, and passed by dogs and draft animals that were as eager to awaken as the dragon itself, which is to say they verily preferred inactivity to exertion!

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• guangxi
• longji
• dragon
• back
• terrace
• rice
• field
• paddy
• farming
• agriculture
• china
• chinese
• tourist
• nature
• hills
• mountains

[antiego1]

beautiful

[mckln]

Thanks!

[kevinmilne]

what ever