Yijun Dryland Terraces 旱作梯田

About Yijun Dryland Terraces

The terracing is worked farmland rather than a built attraction. Local farmers plant film-mulched maize across several thousand mu of terraces, and the CCTV.com report attributes the landscape's striking appearance to sunlight reflecting off the film: in April and May the terraces read as rings of rising white waves. That report also records that the terraces have been named 'China's Beautiful Countryside' by the Ministry of Agriculture, that they were selected among the 100 places most worth visiting in the northwest, and that they serve as a creation base of the China Photographers Association. It describes them as a living, immovable heritage storehouse of farming culture and of the meeting of traditional tillage with modern agriculture.

Kuaiquan town supplies the landscape's other associations. A Shaanxi Daily report carried by CNR describes it as a key cultural-tourism town in the county's south-west and links its name to the legend of Meng Jiangnu, who is said to have passed the spot while searching for her husband during the building of the Great Wall and to have brought forth a spring there through thirst and weeping. The same report describes a demonstration area built around the terraces, the Meng Jiangnu legend, farming-culture memories and other elements. The two reports place Kuaiquan differently – 12.5 kilometres south of the county seat in one, in the county's south-west in the other – and neither describes the terraces as loess-plateau scenery, which is how the catalogue labels them.

What to look for

• The film-mulched maize terraces, which the CCTV.com report says form rings of white waves in April and May as sunlight reflects off the film.
• The interlocking ridges, mounds, gullies and ravines around Kuaiquan that the same report gives as the setting of the terracing.
• Kuaiquan town, which the Shaanxi Daily report links to the Meng Jiangnu spring legend and to the county's planned demonstration area.
• The landscape as photographic subject matter: the CCTV.com report records a China Photographers Association base here.

Location & getting there

Getting to Yijun Dryland Terraces

Check the open visitor route and follow the site’s rules on distance, food and photography. Conservation areas may limit access beyond designated paths.

• Search for 旱作梯田 with 铜川市 and 宜君县.