Mu Cang Chai Rice Terraces

In the flooding season at Mù Cang Chải, one moment stays with people for good. Water is led into the terraces one plot at a time. Each flat surface catches the sky and the drifting clouds, and hundreds of small mirrors lie spread from the foot of the hill to the mountaintop. Then September comes. The water drains away, the rice ripens, and the whole slope glows the color of honey.

Mù Cang Chải is a famous region of rice terraces in the Northwest of Vietnam. It once belonged to Yên Bái province. After the administrative reorganization, it belongs to Lào Cai province. Older books and signs may still say Yên Bái, because most of the monument's records were drawn up before the merger.

The terraces are a national monument, and that is no ordinary title. In 2007 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism ranked them a national scenic site. Then, on December 31, 2019, the Prime Minister signed Decision 1954, which raised them to a higher level: special national monument. According to the monument file, the special scenic area lies in six communes of the old Mù Cang Chải area. The first two are La Pán Tẩn and Chế Cu Nha. Next come Dế Xu Phình and Kim Nọi. The last two are Mồ Dề and Lao Chải. Together they cover about 852.9 hectares.

But what gives Mù Cang Chải its value is not a decision signed on paper. It is the human hand.

The local authorities describe the terraces as the work of the Hmong people, and as a mark of their skill at growing wet rice on steep mountainsides. Each plot is made by cutting into the slope, raising a bank to hold the water, and leading water down from a stream high above. The Hmong build one small plot at a time, stacked from the foot of the slope to the top. One family may build a few dozen plots. A village adds them up into hundreds. Generation after generation, through many lifetimes, they shaped the mountainsides that stand here today.

At La Pán Tẩn, the terraces are round and soft, stacked one above another. In the tourism trade, people often call them đồi mâm xôi, the sticky rice tray hills, because their shape recalls round plates of sticky rice. That is a name from tourism and not an official place name. Still, it captures the grace of the terraces here very well.

At Chế Cu Nha, long layers of fields run down the hillside, with roofs, footpaths and people at work among them. Fields and village cannot be pulled apart. At Dế Xu Phình, the national tourism authority describes terraces shaped like horseshoes. They are especially beautiful when slanting light crosses the slope in the early morning and late afternoon.

The golden season usually peaks around September, the national tourism authority says. The flooding season, usually from May to June, also draws many people, because of the mirror-like water.

The road into the terraces climbs over the Khau Phạ Pass, one of the four great passes of the Northwest. Crossing a high pass like this shows why people of the highlands had to grow rice on the mountains instead of farming only on flat land. Here there is no plain. They made their fields out of steep slopes, with their own hands.

That is why the terraces of Mù Cang Chải deserve to be called a special national monument. They are beautiful, but more than that, they are living proof of the labor, ingenuity and will of people facing a harsh landscape.

In September, when the afternoon sun pours down the mountainside, the whole slope at La Pán Tẩn blazes like golden fire. Small plots shimmer, linked one to the next from the foot to the top. Far off, the wind slips through the ripe rice, with a soft rustle, the sound of many lifetimes of work.