"Gaotian is like a staircase, Pingtian is like a chess game. The egret suddenly flew over and touched the green needle." In the eyes of photographers, terraces are like poems and paintings, like God's staff, but in the eyes of the local people, they are real life, with a hoe of mud, a seedling, a sweat, and a lot of hard work...

This is a group of terraces photographed in the countryside of Guilin, Guangxi. The climate on the mountain is later than that on the plains. Although it is already summer, spring plowing has just begun on the mountain. When we arrived, water had just been put in the terraces, and some were still renovating the fields to prevent leaks.

The Yao people who have lived here for generations are still engaged in the most primitive farming labor. Since there are no high mountains and steep slopes and no plain terrain suitable for growing rice, in order to solve the food problem, their ancestors migrated here from far away and began. The transformation of terraces was at first only to transform gentler places. Later, more and more descendants, and each generation continued to transform. Hundreds of years later, they finally formed today's magnificent terraces.

These terraces are wide and narrow, long and short, very irregular, like chains and belts, winding from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain. The hills are like snails and the mountains are like towers. From the perspective of a traveler or photographer, it can definitely be described as surprise and magnificent, but it is different for the local Yao compatriots. The terraces here cannot be farmed mechanically. They can only be done by hand like their ancestors hundreds of years ago.

For terraces that have just been filled with water, the most important task is to properly renovate the edge of the field. They don't even need a hoe. They carry a curved knife basket on their backs and use a knife to cut off stubborn weeds when encountering them. Otherwise, they will all use their hands to pick up mud on the edge of the field, paste the edge of the field completely like pasting a wall, and then step hard on the edge of the field with their bare feet.

According to my eldest brother who is tidying the fields in the field, every piece of terraced fields is not big, the largest one is only a few cents, and the smallest one can only be inserted into three seedlings. There is even a folk saying that "a frog jumps into three fields" and "a coir coat covers the field".

It is easy to understand how a frog jumps across three fields, which mainly means that the terraces here are relatively narrow. The narrowest one may be that ordinary walking stairs are not much wider. But what does it mean by "a coir coat covering the fields"?

According to this eldest brother, this is a local legend. A long time ago, a landlord told several farmers to cultivate 108 plots of land at the foot of the mountain, and they had to finish plowing before they could finish finishing work. However, when the farmers had finished plowing all the terraces at the foot of the mountain, they all found that only 107 plots had been plowed. However, the main land clearly said that there were 108 plots and they had to be plowed before they could finish. What troubled them was that no matter how hard they searched, they could not find the remaining piece. In desperation, He had to clean up the bamboo hat and coir coat on the ground and prepare to go home. Only then did he unexpectedly discover that there was a field hidden under the coir coat, so there was a legend that "a coir coat covered the field".

Brother Yao told me that there are not enough people in the village now, and many young people have gone out to work, but they can't bear to see these terraces being deserted, because if these terraces are not planted for a year, many weeds will grow, and terraces are also very easy to leak water. If you want to plant them again later, it is equivalent to wasteland, so I can't bear it and can only plant them as much as possible.

When they were cleaning the field, they had been bending over the mud since the morning. They didn't seem tired. In fact, many people couldn't stand it. If they weren't for people who worked a lot, they wouldn't be able to last one day and might not be able to straighten their bodies the next day. The whole body would be sore.

I asked him,"Aren't you tired of cleaning the field like this?", He said how he wouldn't be tired. This is life, and generations have been through it like this. When the farming season is busy, everyone can't stay idle. Their children once wanted to take them to live in the city, but they still feel more comfortable when they go to the city. The mountains here are beautiful, water, and air are good. Although it is a little tired, it is not controlled by others. When you are tired, you can rest for a while. When you are hungry, you can eat the grains and vegetables you grow. Listening to the chirping of insects and birds, and smelling the aroma of flowers and fruits on the roadside, this feeling is comfortable.

He said that the terraces are also very beautiful. Nowadays, many outsiders come here to take photos every day. Now that the water has just been released, it is the most beautiful season of the year. However, it is best to be at sunrise and sunset. The golden glow shines on the terraces, reflecting colorful patterns. If you encounter the first clear after rain and some clouds and mist, it will be another wonderful feeling.