Honghe Hani Terraced Fields Festival

Date: Hani Terraced Fields in Yuanyang, Yunnan Province

Place: In the middle of November

Hani Terraced Fields Festival is held in the city of Yuanyang, in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, 200 km from Kunming , the provincial capital. It is a major annual event for the local Hani Ethnic Minority, who celebrates this occasion in honor of their age-old agrarian culture in this mountainous region. Yuanyang is surrounded on all sides by mountains, and therefore arable land is scarce. To pursue agriculture in this mountainous terrain, the ingenious and resourceful Hani had no choice but to dig their terraced paddy fields – rice being their main crop – out of the mountain slopes. This innovative method is the only way that the otherwise non－arable land of mountain slopes can be put to agricultural use.

The festival includes a show and a distinguished local dinner. The show is fittingly performed in the paddy fields. All the actors and actress are local Hani farmers. They display their farming prowess by mimicking the spring plowing and the autumn harvest. Like the terraced paddy fields of Longsheng, Guangxi Province, the paddy fields of the Hani of Yuanyang are a marvel to behold, and represent generations of hard and diligent work by the Hani people. Their terraced paddy fields wind from the bottom of the mountains up to the top, resembling, from a distance, great chains or ribbons as they wind their way around the con Tours of the mountain slopes in parallel, tiered bands.