Longsheng Rice Terraces, which is also called the Longji Rice Terraces (Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces), located at Longsheng County, 77 km from the Guilin City. Built from Ming Dynasty and completed at early Qing Dynasty, Longsheng Rice Terraces has a history over 650 years.
Longsheng Rice Terraces occupies a large area which includes a group of rice terraces. It can be divided into three parts from east to west, Jinkeng Red Yao Terraced Fields, Ping'an Zhuang Terraced Fields and Longji Old Village Cultural Terraced Fields. The local enthic minority people Zhuang people and Yao people have clutivated here for many centuries. With the tourism industry developing, the ethnic villages in the terrace fields have attracted more and more tourists for its unique ethnic customs and traditional houses.
Jinkeng Red Yao Terraced Fields
Jinkeng Terraced Fields includes 5 small Red Yao Minority villages, with Dazhai Village on the mountain foot, Zhuangjie Village on the mountain side and Tiantou Village on the mountain top. Jinkeng Terraces is like a natural formed pit, it is less commercialized compared with other spots and the majestic scenery are the reasons make Jinkeng Terraces the most popular sites for backpackers and independent travellers. Most of the photos used for Guilin tourism advertisement are shot here. It has three viewpoints which form a triangle where visitors can have good views of Jinkeng Rice Terraces.
Viewpoint 1: West Hill Music . Closest to Tiantou Village and 1,180m above sea level, the West Hill Music is the highest view point. As the symbol of Jinkeng Terraces, it has the widest view vision and the best place to observe sunrise and sunset.
Viewpoint 2: Thousand-layers Terraces: It is located in the west part of Jinkeng terraces, the closest point to Dazhai Village. The Thousand-layers Terraces is also good for sunrise and sunset observation. From this point of view, you can watch layers and layers of terraces piled up like stairways leading to the sky and the villages on the mountain slopes.
Viewpoint 3: Golden Buddha Peak. This view point is easy to reach by cable car. The Golden Buddha Park observation spot faces to the west, so it's a good place to watch the sunset and take photos. Compared with the viewpoint 1 and 2, the scenery we get here is less impressive.
Ping'an Zhuang Terraced Fields
Ping'an Zhuang Terraced Fields is located at Ping'an village, it is the most popular rice terraces of Longsheng. With more and more visitors coming, the restaurants, hotels, bars, and even cafes are built at the village, thus, you can enjoy the leisure time after the visit of the rice terraces. The habitants here are mainly Zhuang ethnic people. Ping'an Terraces are more delicacy and elegant, visitors can watch the scenery of rice terraces at 2 viewpoints, Seven Stars around the Moon and Nine Dragons Five Tigers which are close to each other.
Longji Old Village Cultural Terraced Fields
Longji Village is about half hour walk from Ping'an Village. The village is surrounded by layers of terrace fields, Longji Village has more historical sites, for instance, the best-preserved stilt-style architecture of Zhuang people. There are five old houses in the village and the oldest one was built in Qing Dynasty with a history of 150 years.
Huangluo Yao Village
Huangluo Yao Village is the only Red Yao Ethnic Village Longsheng Rice Terraces area. The whole village is famous for Red Yao people's costumes, long hair show and dancing performance. The villageis composedof about 60 families and every woman in the village has long hair over 1 m, and the longest hair reaches to 2.1 m. For this reason, it awarded the recognition of Guinness World Records in 2002. Visitors cah watch the hair-combing performance every day in the village, and if you are interested in photographing, you can hire some women as your models.
Tips for travel to Huangluo Yao Village:
(1) Unmarried Red Yao girls wraps their hair with a cloth until they get married.
(2) The Red Yao people will step on the tiptoe of somebody that they have good feeling on. If they have a great affection on that person, they will step on his heel.
(3) To show friendship, they will pinch other's hip, so don’t be panic when you're pinched by some women.
Jinzhu Zhuang Village
Jinzhu Zhuang Village is famous for its golden bamboo (Jinzhu means golden bamboo in Chinese). It is the first village that wecomes visitors to Longji Terraces, most of the people here are Zhuang ethnic minorities. Their houses are clled the stilted houses, you can see some well-preserved houses in the village. Before meals, usually there is a toast song – the Zhuang girls in traditional costumes will toast to you with the local wine while singing a local song bless you all the best.
