Planting Rice

This trip to Yangshuo was different from our last in part because of the state of the rice fields. When we visited last, it was autumn and the rice was tall and ripening. This time, the fields were just being planted. We saw rice farmers hard at work on a number of occasions, planting the tiny rice shoots in the flooded fields. In the first photo, a woman is pulling the tiny rice plants out of the diveted trays where they are started and putting them into the bucket to take to the field to plant.

These second two pictures show the painstaking work of planting the tiny rice shoots, one at a time. One of our guides on our trip told us a Chinese saying about the life of a farmer~ "Face to the ground, back to the sky." Seems to be pretty accurate for these rice farmers who are still using traditional methods.

The work is hard, but the view is amazing! This scene was at the beginning of a half day hike we took through a group of karsts. We were fortunate to get to walk through some old villages and farms along the way.