ON a drizzly August afternoon, visitors made their way through the emerald rice terraces of Ziquejie in Xinhua county, Loudi, Hunan province, which appeared and disappeared in the drifting mist.
As cars and buses ascended the winding mountain roads, the mist thickened over terraces carved into the slopes like giant green staircases. Each field held still water, reflecting the gray sky, while young rice ears bent under the weight of fresh raindrops.
The terraces, built along the mountain contours between 500 and 1,200 metres above sea level, were in full summer bloom. Unlike most rice fields in southern China, locals said, the crop here is harvested just once a year, ripening in October.
Covering about 133 hectares in the core area, the Ziquejie terraces are celebrated for their graceful lines, layered patterns and striking scale, regarded as a masterpiece of agricultural engineering shaped over millennia.
The terraces are believed to date back more than 2,000 years to the Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) dynasties, with origins attributed to the ancestors of the local Miao and Yao ethnic groups.
Remarkably, the system relies entirely on a natural irrigation network fed by mountain springs, forest soil and bedrock fissures, without any reservoirs or man-made ponds.
Water flows year-round, defying both drought and flood. As a local farmers’ saying goes: “As high as the mountain rises, so does the water; as high as the water reaches, so do the fields.”
Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2026
