Private Tour: Longsheng Culture and Longji Rice Terraces

Your private guide will pick you up from your hotel in Guilin and drive you to Longsheng County, two hours northwest of Guilin. Begin your private tour by visiting the villages of the Zhuang and Yao people, two of the ethnic minority groups officially recognized in China. Your guide will provide comprehensive information about the culture and traditions of the Zhuang and Yao. See their unique and colorful clothing; listen to the melodious folk music; watch the playful dances; and observe the women weaving and embroidering. Enjoy a local lunch before traveling to the Longji Rice Terrace Fields.

Climb up to the summit of the Longji Rice Terraces at an elevation of 2,886 feet (880 meters). A half-hour hike up offers an amazing panoramic vista of this incredible feat of farm engineering. The terraced fields were first built in the Yuan Dynasty, when the Zhuang people were forced to flee to the mountains. In order to continue farming on the mountains, the Zhuang people turned the mountains into farmland by creating terraced fields where the farmers could grow rice.

From the peak, the terraced rice fields resemble the backbone of a dragon twisting and turning into the distance. The terraces divide the mountain into multiple layers. Tiers of water glisten in the sun during the spring; lush green rice shoots appear in the summer; layers of golden rice flourish in the fall; and layers of snow cover the terraces in the winter.