Pacified Terraced Fields, a Unique Spring Landscape in the Taihang Mountains
The beauty of the southern terraced fields is graceful and elegant, like southern women with water-made faces. What's more, there is another kind of terraced field in the north, majestic and vigorous, like iron, which is the 'Stone Terraced Fields' of northern China. Located in the Taihang Mountains in Pingdingshan County, Shanxi Province, the terraced fields snake up from the foot of the mountains, layered like a chain, with a staggered and harmonious arrangement. The hills, ravines, and valleys stretch for dozens of layers from the foot of the mountain to the top, like a series of musical scores, while the farmers who diligently cultivate the land are the grand piano players, playing a moving song of the earth.
Every valley, every ridge, from the foot of the mountain to the top, has been transformed into terraced fields. Seeing these terraced fields, you can feel the harmony between man and nature, and the joyful song between man and nature. Standing in the terraced fields, you won't feel like you’re in a wilderness, but rather surrounded by thick rural atmosphere. At the head of the fields and in the countryside, wildflowers compete for beauty, with purple orchids like jade, pink peach blossoms like clouds, and yellow honeysuckle like fire. These colorful flowers sway in the wind, highlighting the layered terraced fields as if they were wearing dresses with patterns, and when the wind blows, the delicate and smooth patterns make people's minds wander, and can't help but be moved.
‘Hu Yu’—the vast field echoed with the sound of oxen being driven by shouts. An old man with two white eyebrows held a wooden plough handle in one hand and a leather whip in the other, two oxen with black and white colors mixed, marched steadily across the light brown soil after being ploughed. A middle-aged farmer with a white beard held a metal rake sideways, moving step by step, the wooden handle of the rake moved forward and backward, leaving a series of footprints and rake furrows, the ridges after the furrows were straight and uniform. A couple were busy in the terraced fields irrigated by well water, the husband held a shovel, following the flowing water, walked along the ditch and leveled it, the wife watched carefully the ridges irrigated by the water, although the division of labor was uneven, but when they started working, the couple were fully focused, tacitly interpreting the warmth of home.
The air was filled with the fragrance of earth, which combined with the shouts of livestock, the impromptu tunes and the sounds of livestock hitting their noses, creating a spring sowing symphony. An old man rested and talked about the difficulty of building the terraced fields. In this ‘high mountains and many stones, and then climb the slope’ place, there is a shortage of arable land, so they have to build fields by making earth, because the barren mountains and steep slopes have few stones and little earth, it takes two meters high and one kilometer long double-stone dyke to build each piece of land, and they transport nearly ten thousand loads of earth. They smashed the stones at the bottom of the ditch and moved them to the slope, built a stone wall on the slope and filled it with crushed stones, then they dug out the earth from the cracks and dug it up from the mountain side, and carried it to the terraced fields, which is a miracle completed by the spirit of ‘ten thousand li and ten thousand loads for one mu of land, and create high yield on blue stone boards’.
Tips: Transportation: Self-driving along National Highway 307 (Baiping) - Seven Ba Line - East Return can reach Ma Shan, the terraced fields are along the road. Buses can take the bus to Ma Shan, East Gate of Pingdingshan City and nearby villages.
Food: Pingdingshan oily meat, Pingdingshan pot, pot fight, vermicelli tofu silk are all the most distinctive Pingdingshan delicacies.
Small Tips: Rural roads are mostly narrow and steep, with ravines and valleys, so you should drive carefully and pay attention to safety.
