Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs (Longji Titian/ The Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces)
The Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces: Longji Titian how will these incredible teraaces survive? This piece looks at the issues raised in the article “Drinking Their Fields Dry”, written by Xiong Lei and published in the China Daily on 12 -7-2007. The article focuses on the effects tourism is having on the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces (Longji titian) near Longsheng in the Zhuang Autonomous Region in Guangxi province.
The Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces: Longji Titian
On that beautiful late summer’s evening in 2003 the dynamite went off at regular intervals, with a thud that echoed around the entire valley, shattering the silence of an area without cars and very little electricity. I looked on as a crowd of local Zhuang from the village of Ping’an gathered to watch how huge swathes of the beautiful terraced mountain side were blasted to pieces to make way for a new road that would eventually arrive at the very centre of their village.
I wondered then what changes that road would bring to their lives. I never imagined that they would be so quick and so damaging.
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