The Sin Ho Plateau

In the northwest, in Lai Châu Province, only 60 kilometers from Lai Châu city, there is a plateau that stays cool all year. The average temperature is just 18 degrees Celsius. People call this place the Roof of Lai Châu. Its name is the Sìn Hồ plateau.

The plateau lies at an average height of 1,500 meters. It is never hot in summer and only mildly cold in winter. People often compare Sìn Hồ with Sa Pa, because it also has terraced fields and drifting mist, and Hmong families live there too. But Sìn Hồ has not been built up for tourism the way Sa Pa has. The beauty here is more natural and quieter. Many people say it is the Sa Pa of 20 years ago.

Sìn Hồ is home to three main ethnic groups, the Hmong, the Dao and the Thái. The Hmong are the majority, and they have left the clearest cultural mark on the plateau.

In this country of rock, the Hmong build their houses from stone. But not in the way most people picture. The Black Hmong here choose flat slabs from the mountainsides and stack them in the traditional way, with no cement and no mortar. It is stone laid on stone, so skillfully that the walls stand for hundreds of years. In Sà Dề Phìn village, on this plateau, some stone houses like these are more than 200 years old. No cement, and still they stand in the mist and the mountain wind.

Sà Dề Phìn is no ordinary village. It sits at more than 1,700 meters, another 200 meters above the center of Sìn Hồ. Mist covers it all year. On early mornings the mist drifts past the houses, over the fields and between the people, like a scene from an old period film. Photographers often call it the land above the clouds.

Terraced fields are the second symbol of Sìn Hồ. The plots curve along the mountainsides and rise in layers from low to high. Each one was made by Hmong farmers over many generations. No single person could do it. It is the shared inheritance of a whole clan, each generation clearing another patch of steep land.

Sìn Hồ looks different in each of its four seasons.

The season of flowers runs from January to March. Plum, peach and pear blossoms open white and pink across the slopes. Against the silver-gray mist and the deep green forest, the white blossoms glow like fallen snow. It is the most beautiful season of the year.

From September to October the rice ripens. The terraces turn from green to blazing gold, layer upon layer like a lacquer painting. On an early morning, with the mist not yet lifted, many people look down into the golden valley and do not want to move on.

In summer the Sìn Hồ plums ripen. They are a famous specialty of this land. They are large and sweet, and more fragrant than ordinary plums, because they grow at great height in a climate that stays cool all year.

Besides plums, Sìn Hồ has sơn tra, a sweet and sour highland fruit that is often soaked in liquor or brewed into tea. There are crisp, fragrant mustard greens. There is purple upland rice, which tastes quite different from rice grown on the plains.

In the villages live Hmong, Dao and Thái families. They live modestly among the clouds and mountains, their hands busy all year with the fields and the stones. Sitting by their fire with a small cup of sơn tra liquor, you feel the honest warmth of the highlands.

Sìn Hồ is quiet. There are no flashing colored lights, and no crowds of tourist services. People come here looking for something that time has not yet changed, and on this plateau they always find it. They find terraced fields layer upon layer, early mornings when mist still covers every village, and stone houses more than 200 years old.