Guilin and the Longji Terraced Rice Fields

We arrived in Guilin in a small propeller plane and transferred to the Lijiang Waterfall Hotel, a huge hotel in the centre of Guilin.

The main purpose of our trip to Guilin was to see the Longji Terraced Rice Fields but this would wait until tomorrow. First we were off to see some cormorant fishing on the Li River. The fisherman take the cormorants out onto the river on bamboo rafts and send them into the water to catch fish which they return to the raft. You might ask ‘why don’t the birds eat the fish?’ The cormorants have a string around their necks to stop them swallowing the fish..! The boys found this a little troubling particularly as the fisherman picked the birds up by the necks to remove the fish. From the river we could see some of the amazing karst scenery for which this area is famous.

Our trip to the Longji Terraced Rice Fields was a two hour car journey from Guilin. We had a driver and guide for the day. We drove out of the city of Guilin, through rural agricultural land with many fruit and vegetable trees, before starting to climb up in the mountains on twisting and turning roads, very steep at times. The road had taken us as far as it could, we were now on foot! We had to climb uphill to Ping’an Village, about 30 minutes of climbing steps to this small village built on the mountainside. From here we still had another 20 minutes of uphill walking to get to the best viewpoints of these spectacular terraced rice fields. The rice is grow in terraces all down the hillside with the highest altitude being 1180 metres and the lowest being 380 metres. The rice terraces cover an area of 70 square kilometres. The views were spectacular.

After all our climbing we went back down to the village of Ping’an for a wonderful local lunch – the best food of our time so far in China.