Ping'ancun

This guide to Ping'ancun near Guilin follows one family, the Liao clan, who founded this mountainside village at the end of the Ming dynasty and, with only hoes and baskets, carved its steep ridge into terrace after terrace of rice paddies. It traces the shapes villagers have picked out in the surrounding slopes, from the ridgeline they call nine dragons and five tigers to a single round paddy known as the moon with its seven stars. Nearly seven hundred people live here now, and almost all of them share the same family name.