Longsheng, staircases carved for rice

Two hours north of Guilin, the hills of Longsheng county are cut into the Longji rice terraces, the Dragon's Backbone, ribbons of paddy stacked from riverbed to ridge line between roughly 300 and 1,100 metres. Villagers began carving them in the Yuan dynasty and finished the work under the Qing, entirely by hand, and they are still farmed by hand today because no machine can turn on a terrace a metre wide.

Two village clusters give access. Ping'an, settled by Zhuang families, looks out on the viewpoints known as Seven Stars with Moon and Nine Dragons and Five Tigers, and is the easier walk from the road. Dazhai, in the Jinkeng valley, belongs to the Red Yao and is bigger and steeper, with a cable car to the Golden Buddha Peak platform and a well-marked trail of four to five hours linking the two clusters over a saddle. Nearby Huangluo is known as the long-hair village: Red Yao women cut their hair only once, at eighteen, and keep it coiled beneath an embroidered wrap, some of it well over a metre long.

Season decides everything. From late April to June the terraces are flooded and every step reflects the sky, a mountainside of broken mirrors. July and August are deep green; from mid-September to early October the rice turns gold and the harvest festivals fill the wooden stilt houses with drums; winter can dust the whole staircase in snow. Stay a night up in the villages, eat bamboo-tube rice, smoked pork and Yao oil tea, and slot Longsheng in beside the karst rivers on a wider route through China.