Day 6: Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces

After our train arrived in Guilin we signed up for a tour of the rice terraces nearby.  We also had our first experiences crossing the street in China which is always an exciting experience, lights, pedestrian walks and direction of traffic does not seem to exist, you first just try and make it to the middle of the road, then you worry about making across the second half of the street.  Once we met up with the bus we headed to the rice terraces and to meet the minority group of villagers that had no roads to their mountain village until 1997.  In 13 years they have changed from a tribe of subsistence farmers to making a living by way of tourism.  In the village we saw almost only women as the men hang out at home while the women do all the work (farming and tourist trade).

 

Rice field in front of minority villagers town

 

Villagers selling products to the tourists

 

The average height of the women is under 5' tall, so Charlotte felt tall!

 

For lunch we had rice with meat cooked in bamboo

Cooking the Bamboo rice

If you didn't want to hike up, you can have people carry you!

 

The mountain village

View from the top of all the rice terraces

 

If you look at the larger version you can see a woman farming the rice terraces

Closer picture of the rice terraces

 

Charlotte looking over the terraces