Honghe Hani Rice Terraces inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has included the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, located in Yunnan Province, in the list of cultural heritage. The total number of UNESCO sites in China has risen to 45.
Rice terraces, hand-carved into hillsides, are considered a man-made marvel of human civilization. By design, they are a self-irrigating system, designed so that the top layer of soil - in which rice grows - is not washed away by water. These terraces are approximately 1300 years old.
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1. The Honghe Hani Rice Terraces Cultural Landscape is a 16,603-hectare site located in the south of Yunnan Province and includes exceptionally beautiful rice terraces cascading down the slopes of the Ailao Mountains to the banks of the Honghe (Red River).
2. One of the features that attract tourists to the terraces is their landscape, which changes dramatically from season to season. In summer, these are kilometers of bright green rice shoots, in autumn - overflows of golden hues of rice stalks.
3. But the best time to visit them is the period from November to April, when the rice terraces are flooded with water, in which the sun is reflected by hundreds of glare.
4. The Hani people living here have developed a complex system of canals that ensure the flow of water to the terraces from the forested mountains.
5. Hani also established an integrated farming system that includes buffalo and other cattle, ducks, fish and eels and red rice, the area's main crop.
6. Locals worship the sun, moon, mountains, rivers, forests, natural phenomena, including fire.
7. The population of the region lives in 82 villages, located between mountain forests and terraces, in traditional thatched mushroom-shaped houses.
8. The efficient sustainable land management system used in the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces is an example of amazing aesthetic and ecological harmony between man and the outside world, based on unique and time-tested social and religious structures.
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