锦绣华南 5

These hill slopes of Yuanyang County plunge nearly 2,000 metres

to the floor of the Red River valley.

Each contains literally thousands of stacked terraces carved out by hand

using basic digging tools.

Yunnan's rice terraces are among the oldest human structures in China.

Still ploughed,

as they always have been,

by domesticated water buffaloes,

whose ancestors originated in these very valleys.

This man-made landscape is one of the most amazing engineering feats of pre-industrial China.

It seems as if every square inch of land has been pressed into cultivation.