Across the mountains of southwestern China, Honghe Hani’s rice terraces unfold over 160 square kilometers to create one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world.
It is often said that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the sky. Not true, of course; sloping building, the slope often do not grow much larger than city streets. But if the helpless human eye could see some of the wonders of the earth from a low orbit, then Honghe Hani rice platforms would be included in China.
From the mountains in southwestern Yunnan province, vast planets – hundreds of thousands – have collected over 160 square kilometers to create one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world.
Additionally, through major engineering work that developed a ladder-like scale, the Hani family – one of 55 government-declared Chinese ethnic groups – was deployed across the region for the benefit of society as a whole.
“Since ancient times, the Hani people have built canals and canals to extract streams from the mountains and forests that irrigate the parks,” Xiaoying, the director of Yunnan, told China Tourlights. “The amount of channels required is huge and requires huge sums of money and resources, which individuals or communities cannot afford on their own.”
Perfect for over a thousand years through trial and error, the Rice Plant is an inspiring example of a community that works naturally plant oil is also major produce here, using lands designed by building in different areas of the environment. Rainwater and water are collected by large clouds on wooded slopes, transmitting groundwater; water is pumped to transport groundwater; evaporation of water accumulated in the clouds; Clouds also gather in the rainforest. This hydrological process is then repeated indefinitely.
“The people of Hani China have always lived in harmony with nature, growing habitats with forests at the top, small villages in the middle, terraces that descend from the water system like a flowing river, creating a unique form of the ‘four aspects’ – forest, village, planets, and water systems, “he said.
This plan provides sustainable benefits not only for growing rice but also for everything from producing crops, vegetables, and fruit to breeding ducks, fishing, and harvesting these processed herbs and traditional medicines. The terrain is beautiful, with Hani running all year round.
“There is running water on this planet that is constantly being recreated,” explains American ethnographer Jim Goodman, author of Yunnan: China South of the Clouds, with many years of experience dealing with tribes. “It’s not like many other astronomical systems in other parts of the world. So in the winter months, outside of the rice season, where the Hani is still useful as a place for fish and frogs, scorpions, well. I hope Hani China eats. “
Hani is believed to have reached Mount Ailao, near the border with Yunnan in present-day Vietnam, in the third century, moving south from the vast mountains of Qinghai-Tibet. What they saw impressed them a lot – fertile soil, mild climate, pouring rain – they chose to take root.
The Hani China uses a series of channels, divisions, and embankments to ensure that water flows efficiently through the tunnels.
With more than 80 cities serving on the planet today, water is invaluable not only for Hani’s survival but also for city integration. Praise who, said Goodman, became the beginning of the team’s success.
“The Hani people use a democratic system of landscape organization, using canals, partitions, and walls to ensure water flows in the right direction,” he said. “Each community has a ‘water watchdog’, who oversees the distribution of water individually. Families whose land is on the ground floor receive the same water as those above.”
Visible from any height, the asymmetrical platforms – some the size of a ball game, others nothing more than hot sheets, all well defined by dark walls covered in dry mud – fit together like a big puzzle game. In winter and spring, the planets are flooded with water to reflect the sky, each resembling candy-like panels and moving windows of dense water.
Hani farmers began excavating platforms from the hills during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), and their land use has been described in manuscripts. The platform has been active ever since, ranging from less than 500m above sea level to cloud heights of over 1,800m and a slope of 70 degrees. The description of the “sky ladder” used above is apt.
Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that these platforms have always been handcrafted and the architecture in use today is very similar to that of Hani’s ancestors.
“You can’t mechanize the platform,” Goodman explains. “Tractors or other machines cannot because of their shape and location. Often submerged in water. So Hani China still uses buffalo or is active. Manual labor, harvesting using the same options, nails, and hand tools. It has been used for centuries.”
Despite gradual expansion during the growing season, Hani’s great works of art have remained hidden from the rest of the world for centuries. A rare tale came from outside in 1890, when Prince Henry of Orleans led a French expedition from Vietnam to Yunnan, searching for the source of the Irrawaddy River that divides Burma in two.
Henri wrote: “The mountains are covered with rice about two-thirds of their height by rice, which grows in ordinary parking lots, raining as bright as glass in the sun,” wrote Henri, adding: “The process is an irrigated garden, it is a great work of art. , all made by hand or trampled on foot.”
In the early 1920s, American Harry A Franck – one of the most famous travel writers of the time – entered Yunnan from Vietnam, peering out the window as his train sped through the narrow streets n’ The sides of the train were narrow. . “There are platforms everywhere, stairs are higher than ladders, taller, and narrower, taller mountains are visible in the new rice fields,” said Quick in his book Roving through Southern China (1925).
