Honghe Hani Rice Terraces
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How it came to be
The Honghe Hani Rice Terraces spread along the south bank of the Hong (Red) River in southern Yunnan. The Hani, who migrated here from the north-west, have built them on the slopes of the Ailao Mountains over more than a thousand years. In places more than 3,000 terraces step down from the forest edge to the valley floor.
The landscape rests on four parts: mountaintop forest, water, terraces and villages. Forests above 2,000 m catch the rain, and four trunk canals and 392 branch ditches carry it down to the fields. The villages sit below the forest, between 1,400 and 2,000 m, and the fields grow red rice alongside water buffalo, cattle, ducks, fish and eels.
The inscribed area holds 82 villages of 50 to 100 households each, many with mushroom-shaped thatched houses. The channels are kept up communally, and the Hani view of a balance between people, gods, nature and community underpins the social and religious order that sustains them. An administration for the terraces was set up in 2007, and the site was inscribed in 2013.
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