One of the highlights of visiting Guilin is to head to the rice terraces in the countryside. Longji, which literally translates to ‘Dragon Backbone’, is home to one of the most amazing rice terraces in China. Construction of the terraces began in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), and continued until the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when construction was completed. The Longji Rice Terraces are the culmination of both the profound wisdom and strenuous labor of the Zhuang people.

During spring, the water is irrigated into the fields and the terraces look like great chains or ribbons hung on the hillsides. With the onset of summer, green waves rush continuously down the mountainside from the top. Autumn is synonymous with harvest, with the mountainside decorated with the gold of ripened millet. Coming winter, the whole mountain will be covered with white snow, just like dragons playing with water.

Besides the amazing scenery, Longji is also the area to visit to experience China’s ethnic minorities’ culture. The Zhuang and Yao nationalities live here, though mainly it is the Zhuang people. The women dress in unique and colorful costumes, singing and dancing. Guests can also join in to enjoy the original Zhuang life and culture, and even stay with local families while enjoying both Longji tea and wine.

We only visited Longji for the day and it was indeed impressive. Even though it remained foggy for most of the day, climbing to the top of the rice terraces offered us unparalleled views of the valley below. The carving of the rice terraces into the slopes is an impressive job that must have required lots of hard labour in the past.

At Ping’An village, there are two viewing platforms – from the No.01 Platform you can catch the stunning view of  “Nine Dragons and Five Tigers”, a metaphor vividly depicting the terraced paddy fields resembling dragons and tigers; from the No.02 Platform you ‘ll see ” Seven Stars Accompany the Moon” that refers to the seven high terraced platform and the watered platform that resembles the Moon, which also offers a fantastic view.

Visit Ping’An Village, or Dazhai Village and Tiantouzhai Village?
For a day tripper from Guilin or Yangshuo, most people do not have enough time to cover the three villages and have to make a choice between Ping’An Village, Dazhai or Tiantouzhai villages due to the limited time. Exploring each village involves 2-3 hour hiking. Ping’An Village is about 19km away from Dazhai Village and Tiantouzhai Village.

Ping’An Rice Terrace area often represents Longji Rice Terraces since Ping’An Village was the first village in the scenic area developing rice terrace sightseeing tourism while Dazhai and Tiantouzhai are newcomers in a less touristy area. By the time we reached Ping’An village, it was close to 12 noon. We spent about 3 hours hiking to the rice terraces and back down, so it was already late afternoon when we got back to the shuttle bus. Since we did not want to miss the last bus heading back to Guilin, we decided to skip Dazhai and Tiantouzhai rice terraces, hopefully we would be able to visit them the next time.

How to get to Longji rice terraces?

There are daily buses directly getting to the Longji Ticketing Office from Guilin Qintan Bus Station and Guilin General Bus Station(76km); and buses from Yangshuo (146km), Heping Town (1km) and Longsheng (14km).

We took the bus from Guilin Qintan bus station. Along the way, the bus conductor found out that we were going to Longji so they dropped us along the junction so that we could change to another bus that goes up to Heping town to start our exploration of the rice terraces.

Total costs

Bus from Guilin to Longji – 31¥

Transfer to local shuttle bus to go up the mountains – 30¥

Entrance fee to Longji Terraces – 95¥

Total = 156¥ ~ S$32.50

Food at the rice terraces cost from 10-100¥ depending on what you order. There are also gift shops, restaurants, guesthouses etc. Since we went during low reason, there were not many tourists and most of the guesthouses were undergoing renovation.