(VOVworld) – The terraced fields of Vietnam’s northwestern region are legendarily beautiful. The rice fields loop around the hills, disappearing and reappearing from the clouds to create a stunning picture. The terraced fields are mainly found in the provinces of Ha Giang, Lao Cai, and Yen Bai. Today we’ll take you on a tour of Mu Cang Chai to explore the life of the local people, the owners of these amazing terraced fields.
The Mong are people of few words and lots of smiles. The women are busy as bees the whole day, doing house work like cooking and sewing and harder work in the field or the forest. They work with the men to direct buffaloes to plough the fields, plant rice seedlings, harvest mature plants, and carry heavy sheaves of rice home. Most Mong men are short, but tough and strong. Ly Bua Lu of La Pan Tan commune is 80 years old, but still hardy. Every day, he goes to work in the terraced rice fields with his children. Lu says Mong people work in the field from dawn to dusk. “Mong people spend more time in the terraced fields than at home. We don’t divide the work. Everyone has to work. The husband ploughs and the wife sows the seeds; one builds up the dike, and the other fetches water. The children weed and tend buffaloes. We have lunch in the fields and continue to work until dark.”

Ly Bua Lu says the land is large but it’s difficult to find land near a water source. If they want to expand the field, they have to find the nearest water source and figure out how to bring the water to the field. 28-year-old Dang Xuan Thuy is an irrigation engineer who works for a big company in Yen Bai province. He says after his investigation, he really admires the complicated irrigation system of the Mong people in Mu Cang Chai. “The water source is far away in the forest. It’s very difficult to direct the water to the fields due to varying height of the terrain. They dig and build the ditches little by little using simple tools such as hoes and shovels or lay bamboo pipes around the foot of the mountain.”

The dykes of the terraced fields create its beauty. Seen from afar, they look short and close to other. But they are actually several meters high, and thick, otherwise the whole system would break in the rainy season. If that happened, deluge of water and mud would bury lower fields belonging to other families. They carefully build and improve the dykes to prevent damages to their own crops or the crops of others. Giang A Du in Mu Cang Chai says: “My father always reminds me to be careful. If I do it carelessly, I will destroy the fields of others. We release the water slowly. The buffaloes don’t plough near the dyke - we use hoes. We have to protect each others’ fields.”

Dinh Tuan