Longji Jinkeng

This guide to the Longji Jinkeng terraces near Guilin traces how Zhuang and Yao settlers, fleeing war more than six hundred years ago, carved these slopes into a staircase of paddies climbing toward the clouds. It follows the Red Yao villages of Dazhai, Zhuangjie and Tiantou, and a lifelong custom the women of these hills still keep: a single haircut at eighteen, and nothing cut again after. Somewhere in the paddies below, a woman is likely bent over planting rice by hand, exactly as her mother and grandmother did before her.