Lao Chai Village

It is morning in Sa Pa. A traveler hitches up the straps of a backpack and starts walking down into the valley. The road hugs the side of the mountain on a gentle slope, and every bend opens onto a different patch of sky.

Mist still lies on the road. The traveler walks slowly. One hand feels along the stone edge at the roadside for a steady footing. The other holds the backpack strap so it does not slip off the shoulder.

Then, at one bend, the traveler stops completely.

Ahead lies a whole mountainside laid out in steps. One step joins the next, climbing from the floor of the valley up to where the clouds hang low. Not a single step is straight. Each bank around a field is a soft curve, because wherever the earth curves, the bank curves with it. The traveler stands and looks for a long time, so long that the destination slips out of mind.

The village down below is Lao Chải.

A little farther down, the traveler begins to walk level with the rice fields. From high above, they looked like brushstrokes. Up close, they are real earth, real banks, real water.

The traveler sits down beside one of the banks and gently touches the earth packed along its top. It is cool and firm, tamped down with care. It is hard enough to hold water, yet soft enough to be built up again when needed. The traveler does not step into the field, and does not walk along the bank either. This is someone's place of work, not a path for strolling.

There is a very soft sound of water. It seeps down from a stream higher up, passes through a small notch in the bank, and drops into the field just below. Once it has dropped, it flows on, finds another notch, and goes down one more step. In this way the water travels the whole mountainside without anyone pushing it along.

The traveler realizes that this is not a scene made for decoration.

The Sa Pa rice terraces are a way of growing wet rice, and they are bound up with the indigenous knowledge of the Hmong, Dao and Giáy communities. Put simply, this is how to grow paddy rice right on a steep slope, in a place where the land refuses to lie flat for anyone. To do it, people have to read the lay of the land. They have to know which way the water will run. They have to know which step should be wide, and which must be narrow because the slope is too steep.

Indigenous knowledge sounds like a solemn phrase. But for someone standing here, it is very concrete. It is in the height of the bank under the traveler's hand. It is in the placement of the little notch that lets water out. It is in knowing which season to let the water in, and which season to hold it back. None of this is written on a sign or posted anywhere. It is passed on by working together, season after season, generation after generation.

The traveler stands up, brushes off both hands, and walks on into the village.

There is something the traveler learns only that day. The Sa Pa rice terraces were recognized as a national scenic site in 2013. That scenic area covers 749 hectares. It spreads across Lao Chải and Tả Van. It takes in Hầu Thào as well.

On reflection, that is something special. A heritage site is usually a communal house, a pagoda, an old citadel, something that has stopped changing. Here, though, what has been entered on the national list is a field that is still at work. It is still planted, still harvested, its banks still rebuilt after the rain. It is heritage and it is farmland, both at the same time.

The traveler walks on along the small path through the village. The houses are scattered over the slope, some higher, some lower, exactly as the land allows. There is the smell of morning kitchen smoke. There is the sound of chickens. Someone calls out to someone else on the far side of the hill.

The traveler walks slowly and stays on the path. The traveler does not cut across anyone's yard, does not push open anyone's door, and does not step over anyone's threshold without an invitation. This is a village where people live, not an exhibit thrown open for everyone to wander through.

It would also be wrong to say that Lao Chải is still wholly pristine, or that it has no services and has never welcomed visitors. Lao Chải is one stop within the village tourism area of Sa Pa. Visitors have been coming here for a long time, and the people of the village know that well.

That village tourism area is shared by several ethnic minority groups of Sa Pa: the Hmong, the Dao and the Tày. The Giáy and the Xa Phó belong to it as well. Lao Chải sits inside that shared space, not apart from it.

And Lao Chải does not stand alone on the map either.

It lies on a sightseeing route laid out by Lào Cai province. The route sets out from Sa Pa and passes through Lao Chải, then Tả Van. From there it goes on to Bản Hồ and Thanh Phú. Next come Nậm Sài and Nậm Cang, and after that the loop turns back to Sa Pa. Reading that string of names aloud, the traveler sees the walk in a clearer light. Lao Chải is not the end of the road. It is one stage in a long loop through many valleys, many mountainsides, and many villages strung together.

In the afternoon, the traveler goes back to the spot from the morning.

It is the same mountainside, but when the light changes, everything changes with it. The banks that were blurred by mist in the morning now stand out line by line, sharp, as if someone had just drawn them again. The shadow of each upper step falls across the step below, making long dark bands that run along the slope.

The traveler thinks about coming back in another season. Rice paddies have their seasons. There is a season when water is led into every field, and then the whole mountainside becomes a stack of mirrors in steps, catching the sky and catching the clouds. There is a season when the rice ripens, and that same mountainside turns a completely different color, warm and thick, running all the way down to the floor of the valley.

The same place to stand, the same fields, and every season makes a Lao Chải of its own.

Night is slowly falling. The traveler hitches up the backpack again and heads out to the main road for the next stage.

After a short way, the traveler turns to look back one more time. The mountainside has sunk almost entirely into the evening shadow. Only a few of the highest steps still hold a little light. Up there, the water is still slipping quietly from one step down to the next. It does not hurry and makes no loud sound. It slides just as it has slid through so many seasons before, and it will keep sliding like that long after the people watching today have gone far away.