Jiabang Rice Terraces Sunrise

Mountains carved into mirrors

The Jiabang terraces climb the steep mountains of Congjiang county in southeast Guizhou, a couple of hours from Zhaoxing. Unlike the wide, symmetrical terraces of some other famous regions, Jiabang is organic and messy in the best way — the paddies follow every fold of the mountains, wrapping around ridges and dropping into hollows, with small Miao and Dong hamlets of wooden houses scattered in between. It is a farmed landscape that has been shaped over centuries, and it still works exactly as it always has.

The season decides your picture. From late spring to early summer the paddies are flooded and every one of them becomes a mirror — at sunrise each terrace holds its own piece of sky, and the whole mountainside lights up bank by bank as the sun climbs. Later in the summer the terraces turn deep green, and by autumn they go gold before the harvest. Whichever season you choose, the mornings are the reason to come: mist lies in the valleys, smoke rises from the villages, and for an hour the terraces, the clouds and the light all move together.