Photographs

Longji Rice Terraces Gallery

Hours, prices and access verified by the Longji Rice Terraces Tours team — last checked August 28, 2026

The Dragon’s Backbone through the seasons — water and green and gold, the villages between the fields, the ropeway over Jinkeng, and the terrace lines lit after dark.

Longji Rice Terraces contour lines wrapping a ridge in Longsheng, with cloud filling the valley behind — The contours read as one continuous line from a distance. Close up they are several hundred separate paddies, each with its own water level.

Green Longji Rice Terraces curving over two ridges with fir forest between them and cable-car cabins on the skyline — July and August, when the rice is at its tallest and the whole slope is one colour.

A pale stone footpath climbing through the Longji Rice Terraces to a small timber viewing shelter on the ridge — The paths are stone steps rather than trails, which is what makes the walk steady rather than steep.

Longji Rice Terraces stepping down from a timber viewing deck on the ridge, with guesthouses on the skyline — Late summer, with the first yellow starting at the top of the slope where the rice ripens earliest.

Yellow cable-car cabins crossing above the Jinkeng Dazhai rice terraces on the Longji ropeway — The Dazhai ropeway crosses the bowl to Golden Buddha Peak. It is charged separately from the scenic-area ticket.

A single green cable-car cabin above the Longji Rice Terraces with mountains and cloud behind — Cabins run continuously rather than to a timetable, so the queue moves even when it looks long.

A walker with a backpack descending a stone path through the Longji Rice Terraces towards Ping'an village — Ping’an from above, on the way down. The village is built along the contour, so almost every guesthouse has the same view.

The Longji Rice Terraces picked out by rows of small lamps after dark above a lit village — The terrace lines are lit after dark. It is the one reason to consider staying the night rather than driving back to Guilin.

Timber and concrete guesthouses on a spur below the Longji Rice Terraces under heavy grey cloud — Cloud sits low in the valley for much of the year, and it clears from the top down rather than all at once.

A village of dark timber houses in the valley below the Longji Rice Terraces with terraced slopes on every side — The villages sit at the break of slope: forest above them, water and paddy below.

A tall concrete and brick guesthouse with laundry drying on its balconies, built on the edge of the Longji Rice Terraces — New guesthouses go up on the edge of the fields every season. The paddies immediately below them are still worked.

A footpath crossing a green ridge of Longji Rice Terraces with a shelter at the top and forested hills behind — From the ridge you can see the next valley of terraces, and the one after that.

Longji Rice Terraces running along a ridge under a wide sky with layered mountains behind — The paddies are cut between 300 and 1,100 metres, which is why the same slope ripens over several weeks.

A flooded paddy with young rice shoots in the foreground of the Longji Rice Terraces under blue sky and cloud — A single flooded paddy at the top of the slope. In spring the whole hillside looks like this.

The Longji Rice Terraces in grey weather, with a road switchbacking below the paddies and forest on the ridges — Grey days flatten the contrast and bring out the water. They are also the quietest days on the platforms.

A visitor leaning on a timber rail at a Longji Rice Terraces viewpoint looking across the valley to terraced slopes — Every platform has a timber rail like this one, and every one of them faces a different way down the valley.

A woman in embroidered minority dress with a silver headdress standing at a timber fence above the Longji Rice Terraces — Silver and indigo, at the edge of the fields. Several minority groups farm these valleys and their dress is not the same.

The bilingual map board of the Guilin Longji Terraced Scenic Area, showing the villages, the numbered viewpoints and the road distances — The board at the entrance carries the distances everything else guesses at: 77 km from Guilin, 23 km on to Jinkeng, 17 km to Ping’an.

Most of these frames come from the two numbered platforms above Ping’an and the three around the Jinkeng bowl — the walks and viewpoints gives the climb to each one, and the month-by-month guide says which weeks give you water, green or gold.

Want to stand where these were taken?

The platforms in these photographs are reachable on a day out of Guilin, and the tours are set out by which valley they go to and how long they stay.

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