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The rice harvest period started in October in China. In the mountainous region of Yuanyang, agriculture is difficult, but the inhabitants succeeded, generation after generation, in sculpting the relief to cultivate rice there.
Seen from the sky, the spectacle is striking. The rice fields draw a patchwork of reliefs extending over kilometres. In Yuanyang, these rice terraces on the mountainside provide a backdrop “fairy“, in the words of a resident. It took 1,300 years to carve 17,000 hectares of terraces. The planting of rice is done in May in paddy fields filled with water, the harvest starts in October for a month and a half. Water up to their knees, peasants cut the stems six hours a day.They are called mountain sculptors.
The methods and gestures have been the same for generations. Each harvest feeds 150,000 people every year. Most of the inhabitants of this mountainous region live from the cultivation of white or red rice. At the beginning of the harvest, it is not uncommon for bowls of this new rice, grown without pesticides, to be offered on the markets. The rice cultivation is very special, with a traditional method in which the rice grows among ducks and fish. At the end of the harvest, ducks, rice and fish end up on the plates.