Not having quite finished our itinerary in Yunnan province, we returned yet again to Kunming on a 24-hour train from Loudi when the New Year's celebrations there had ended and our hosts and new friends dispersed to return to their respective hometowns. In Kunming we caught a six-hour bus to Yuanyang in the far south of Yunnan. Yuanyang is actually a twin-town; Nansha, the new part, and Xinjie, the old village perched on top of a steep hill with an appearance from a distance similar to the Italian hillside towns in Umbria. Our destination, and that of a lot of Chinese tourists too, was Xinjie. The visitor draw card here is not the village itself but what is to be seen on the mountain slopes for many kilometres around. The traditional inhabitants of this region are the Hani people, and over several centuries, successive generations have continued to carve and build rice-growing terraces down the steep mountain slopes and along the valleys between them. The result today is an astonishing landscape where a whole mountain range has been terraced, and the interplay of the sun's rays with the local topography gives each water-filled terrace its own unique kaleidoscope of patterns and colours.
We checked into the Yun Ti Shun Jie Hotel on Thursday night after lugging our backpacks around Xinjie's Titian Town Square seeking the best accommodation deal. We nearly shot ourselves in the foot as we had under-estimated the number of tourists in town and every place was booked out, or within a bed or two of it. The Chinese New Year's holiday week was nearing an end but there were still many Chinese tourists out and about. We returned to the Yun Ti that we had previously rejected for price reasons, only to discover that this place was now full too. Now facing the real prospect of a chilly night under cardboard in a dark alley, we turned to leave when the phone at reception rang with a cancellation. The desk staff called us back and offered us the room, and what's more because it was now 10pm and there was a significant chance that the room would remain vacant if we didn't take it, the price was dropped by 20 Yuan as an inducement. Yay!
The following day we strolled around the town square and then for about an hour along a road out of town that led to the Long Shu Ba Terrace, passing through a couple of Hani villages on the way. The terrace was beautiful and we decided to follow a dirt path that wound its way up between the terrace ponds. In places the track morphed into a deep muddy ditch and at others it was necessary to walk gingerly along the top of the narrow earthen walls that separated the stepped ponds, being careful not to over balance and become compost for next year's rice crop.
Near the top of the path we met a western tourist walking down. We introduced ourselves and chatted as we strolled back to Xinjie. Our new acquaintance was Paul from Los Angeles, a man about the same age as us who sold up six years ago and has been on the road ever since travelling far and wide. He had just crossed into China from Vietnam and was headed north. We had dinner with Paul at a café in the town square, swapping travel tales and exchanging information as we ate.
A common mode of transport in Xinjie is a small three-wheeled bullet-shaped vehicle with two passenger seats. It may be shaped like a bullet but it certainly doesn't move like one. This was fine by us as we wished to admire the scenery leisurely as we travelled along. We hired a driver of one of these to take us on a full day trip to see several of the more distant terraces surrounding Xinjie. On Saturday morning we were up at 4.30am and on our way in our bullet-mobile shortly after five. First stop was the dawn view at the Duo Yi Shu terrace. The viewpoint was a ridge far above the terrace and although most of the three-dimensional perspective was lost from that height and distance, the view was stunning, appearing as a giant black and white jigsaw pattern against a backdrop of a dramatically rising dawn mist. It was easy to forget that every one of those thousands of lines in the vast jigsaw pattern below was actually an earthen wall one to two metres high separating each pond from the one below.
More...
We weren't the only ones admiring the view; there were some other photographers behind us and the man immediately behind us seemed to be particularly intense about his photography judging from the bulky equipment he was lost in. Or was it just too cold for him to come out?
We visited several other terraces during the day, each beautiful and unique. Just when we thought we had seen it all and nothing could top the views we had already seen, we came to the Laohuzui ("Tiger Mouth”) Terrace renowned for its sunset views. Many photographers had already set up their equipment and were waiting patiently for the sun to sink. There were several soft murmured conversations going on regarding F-stops, Lux meter readings, lens refractive index, aperture diffraction compensation, spherical aberration etc etc. Other photographers were holding up filters to the light and cross-referencing the results while one or two gently squeezed a little air puffer across their lenses to waft away that damned molecule of wisp that had just settled. I found a flat rocky outcrop on the cliff top with a nice view and took my digital camera out of my shirt pocket to check that the batteries weren't flat yet.
An hour or so later and about half an hour before sunset, a young man rushed down the path behind me carrying a large bag of photographic equipment and two large tripods. He put one of the tripods next to me so that one of its feet touched my shoe and the other immediately in front of me in the tiny space between me and the cliff face. He left briefly to get some more equipment and when he returned he appeared surprised and miffed that I was still there. He tugged at my coat and pointed to an inferior viewing position further down the cliff-side path, obviously wanting me to go there. His reasoning seemed to be that as he had two tripods while I had none, and he had a really big camera with a bazooka-like lens while I only had a small pathetic shirt-pocket digital, I was clearly a much lesser breed of photographer and should vamoose immediately to the spot he had suggested, or better still fling myself right off the cliff thereby selflessly making an immediate improvement to the world of photography. I stood my ground and he soon sulked off.
I don't mean to make fun of photography enthusiasts generally. Clearly, all that equipment and attention to the fine detail of the various settings yields a better result. And a large lens can reach down into a scene and extract a picture with a clarity and depth of field that a small digital camera cannot hope to emulate. But I couldn't help wondering how applicable the 80:20 rule must be to this situation, and how many of the photos taken with all those sophisticated bulky cameras would end up being displayed only on computer or TV screens.
Sunset came soon after to the Tiger Mouth Terrace and cameras clicked from all directions. This was the view of views. This massive terrace covered the mountainsides and valley floor, and in the few minutes before the sun disappeared behind a distant ridge the whole scene took on the appearance of a sea of molten lava. Again it was difficult to believe that those thousands of thin black lines in the vast interlocking pattern below were walls separating successive ponds stepping relentlessly down the mountainside and across the valley floor.
The Yuanyang Rice Terraces of Yunnan are certainly one of the most spectacular sights in the whole of China. Exquisite. Unmissable. Unforgettable.
 | |  |
