Stairway to Heaven - Hani Terrace

Updated: 2007-07-31 08:41

Harmony between man and nature

The Hani Terrace is one of the most representative of Chinese terraces and a wonder in the world of agricultural civilization. The four-elemental forest-village-terrace-river structure of the agriculture ecosystem and its unique terrace cultural landscape is unparalleled around the world. Human beings living peacefully with their environment is an ideal highly valued in the 21st century. The Honghe Hani Terrace deserves international protection and must be treasured as an example of sustainable development, especially in our increasingly industrialized and modernized society.

For more than 1,000 years, the Hani did not really build a city of their own; they have always been living in village units due to geological reasons; the region along the south banks of the Honghe River is too mountainous to build a city. Thus, it is fair to say that Hani people have focused their energies and wisdom on terraces while others erected buildings.

To some extent, the Hani Terrace represents the utmost harmony human beings could ever attain while settling their environment. They have created a huge irrigation network on mountains with innumerable channels and trenches linking the terraces together where water flows from the higher folds to the lower ones, and then finally into the river again.