What Longji is
The terraces at Longji are a single agricultural system covering about sixty-six square kilometres across eleven administrative villages in Longsheng county, eighty kilometres north of Guilin. They were begun in the Qin and Han, expanded on a large scale under the Tang and Song, and brought to roughly their present extent in the Ming and Qing, which makes them at least 2,300 years old. They run from 380 metres to 1,180 metres above sea level - a vertical span of 800 metres - and the steepest fields are cut on slopes of up to fifty degrees. There is no machinery here; the plough and the water buffalo still do the work.
In April 2018 the system was recognised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, as part of a joint nomination of southern Chinese rice terraces. The area became a national 4A scenic area in 2010, a national wetland park in 2020, and in December 2022 Dazhai village was named one of the UN World Tourism Organization's Best Tourism Villages.
There are three terrace groups and they are not the same. Ping'an is Zhuang, the earliest developed and the most delicately drawn. The Old Zhuang Village is the most intact. And Jinkeng, at Dazhai, is the largest and the most dramatic - which is why it is the one we walk.
Jinkeng, and the people who made it
Jinkeng sits between 880 and 1,180 metres, in a basin ringed by mountains. The Hong Yao - the 'red Yao', so called for their dress, and known for the long hair of the women - came here from the Dongting and Wuxi country of Hunan bringing wet-rice techniques, and the field in front of the village school is said to be their first, the ancestral plot. Their houses are timber and stilt-built, and the whole system is still worked by the families who own it.
Morning - up by cable car, across on foot
We take the cable car up to Jinfo Ding, the highest viewpoint in the Jinkeng group and the only one with a lift, so that the walking is spent on the high terraces rather than queued behind the climb. Jinfo Ding - 'Golden Buddha Peak' - is named for the way it looks from the far ridge, like a seated figure, and it gives the long view down the valley and the two rock formations the local names describe as an eagle spreading its wings and a gourd on a golden thread. It faces the setting sun, so the light here improves all afternoon.
Late morning - Tiantou and the Thousand-Layer Stair
From the summit we walk the high path to Tiantou village, where the trail becomes what it actually is: the stairway the villagers use to get to their fields, narrow, stone-edged, sometimes wet, and cut into the slope in single file. Above Tiantou is the second viewpoint, Dajie Qianceng Tianti - the thousand-layer stair to heaven - where the terraces pile up the ridge in band after band with a cluster of a dozen houses caught in the middle of them. This is the section of the day that justifies the transfer.
Lunch
Lunch in a village guesthouse on the terraces - rice from the fields below it, and the local cured pork and bamboo.
Afternoon - Xishan Shaoyue, and the descent
The third viewpoint, Xishan Shaoyue, sits above Tiantou and looks east, which makes it the sunrise platform: from it you can see forty to fifty square kilometres of terrace at once, and on the horizon the 1,918-metre Fuping Bao and, beyond it, Mao'er Shan. In the afternoon the light is behind you rather than into it, which is the better direction for reading the terraces as drawn lines rather than as glare.
The descent is on the village stairways through the fields, past the irrigation channels that feed the system - thirty-three permanent streams run off this massif - and back down to Dazhai. It is rough underfoot and hard on the knees in the lower sections, and your guide can shorten it at any point by bringing the vehicle up to meet the group at Tiantou.
A note on the season
The terraces read completely differently through the year, and it is worth choosing: mid-May to early June is the flooding period, when the fields become mirrors and the whole massif reflects the sky; late September to mid-October is the harvest, when it turns from green to gold; and winter brings snow and cloud. Tell us your dates and we will tell you honestly what you will see.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
