Doctor Tran Hue Son, director of northern mountainous province of Lao Cai’s department of culture, sports and tourism expressed the determination to nominate Sapa’s terraced fields as a world heritage after they were recently recognized as one of seven most beautiful and magnificent terraced fields in the Asian region and the world by US-based Travel & Leisure magazine.
Lao Cai Province’s culture, sports and tourism sector is advising that provincial authorities and the culture ministry make a survey and compile files on Sapa’s terraced fields, Hoang Lien national park and the ancient rock bank in Sapa to submit to UNESCO for recognition as world cultural heritages.
The US’s magazine has compared Sapa’s terraced fields as ladders to the sky. H’Mong and Dao people, ethnic minority groups living in the region, with their colorful costumes and various and native cultural characters create great attraction to foreign travelers.
Although having become well-known, Sapa is not the only area in Vietnam having terraced fields. Terraced fields are also popular in neighboring provinces of Lao Cai in the northwestern region, the midland and even the central highlands. Some opinions say that terraced fields in Ha Giang province are really masterpieces, however less well-known because of the disadvantage of traffic system.
Cultivating rice on terraced fields reflects the people’s comprehensive adaptation to nature and their respect for as well as awareness in environment protection. The terraced field is a form of cultivation in the mountainous topographies of many ethnic groups in the world. In high mountainous areas without flat land for cultivation, ethnic people overcome the situation by choosing terraced hillsides and mountainsides with plentiful soil properties and latter channeling water from the top of the mountain to the lower areas of the fields.
Terraced fields in Lao Cai have been created by the hardworking and talented hands of people belonging to local ethnic minorities, including the H’Mong, Dao, Ha Nhi, Giay, Tay and Xa Pho people, for hundreds of years.
Visitors can arrive in Lao Cai’s high mountainous areas into two seasons of a year to sight the stunning beauty of terraced fields: The first time is as ethnic growers channel water into their fields, making them like watercolor paintings and another time is in the autumn as rice paddies ripen, laden with grains like brilliant yellow waves.
With the monsoon subtropical climate, mountainous province of Lao Cai’s growers must wait till May and June when it enters rainy season to start their cultivation. This is the time when terraced fields showing its most beauty in summer. Terraced fields curve round high mountains of Sapa, Bac Ha, Bat Xat and Simaica. In the autumn, ripened rice fields become brilliant under the sunshine and undulate with the wind. Their astonishing beauty has been a source of inspiration for amateur as well as professional photographers.
Seven most magnificent terraced fields in the world as voted by Travel & Leisure: Banaue (Philippines), Yuangyang (Yunnan, China), Ubud (Bali, Indonesia), Annapurna (Nepal), Mae Rim (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Sapa (Lao Cai, Vietnam), and Long Ji (Kuei Lin, China).
M.C
Vietnamese
