Longji Rice Terrace: the Game

I'll admit it: I was mildly obsessed with video games for a few years in my youth. Bubble Bobble was my favorite, and I had pretty decent aim in duck hunt. I outgrew the phrase almost as quickly as I fell into it so that I have no idea what my students are talking about when they drone on about their PSPs

My trip to Longji Rice Terrace brough numberous similarities to some of the best elements of my favorite games.

While toted as being located "outside Guilin", the Dragon Backbone Terrace is actually a three-hour car ride, zigzagging through a rugged mountain range that could easily fit in among the courses of Mario Cart. The amount of switchbacks and lumpy curves would keep the more streamlined mushroom character on his mushroom toes.

We reached a significantly high altitude when the road just stopped, and we had to go the rest of the way on foot. After hiring incredibly physically fit grandmothers to sherpa our bags, our merry party set out up the mountain like Dizzy, the walking, talking egg video game character on a quest for...something or another. While his journey transversed forests and treehouse towns, we trekked a dizzying path through lush gullies and through wooden villages built at such extreme angles on the mountainside that they were given the appearance of dizzy's eggfolk's treehouses (or Ewok residences...pick your reference).

The villages were helter-skelter, multi-level jigsaw pizzles straight out of Donkey Kong, where bridges over fifteen-feet deep duck pond pits could be nothing more than an ancient, wobbly plank. Wooden buildings with second stories jetting out formed tunnels over the path. Gutter-sized open aquducts appeared out of the most unexpected places and contained such unique turns that it would make an amazng waterslide for a hamster.

We reached our guesthouse near the summit with the same level of excitement and wonder as a little kid whose character just climbed up the magic beanstock for the first time to reach the hidden cloud level in Super Mario Brothers 3. We seemed to step into our own cloud kingdom. Our completely wooden room felt like a ship cabin hovering above the rice terraces, which followed the curves of the mountains to the horizon on either side. Directly in front of us, we could not even see the valley where the road ended. The rice patties abruptly stopped on the edge of a cliff, yet somewhere far below was the river and the road. I kept expecting Princess Toadstool to pop up offering milk tea, but it never happened.

After a delicious lunch, we hiked through the rolling rice terraces in the same complex, tiered maze as The Legend of Zelda. We twisted around the mountains and forged up the engineering marvel of the rice terrace steps, where water trickled from the flooded top to the tiers below it.

We wondered along the path on a mission to find the best views. Every once in awhile we would stumble across a waterfall on the upper edge of the rice terrace and would splash cold water on our arms and face. We passed small houses belonging to the Zhaung minority group who lives on the mountain and walked through slender rows of corn when the land was too rocky or dry to grow rice.

My friends and I had to be weary. Hot pink clod women would appear from behind bends, wanting us to pay to see their long hair (since that ethnic group does not cut their hair, and it can reach their ankles). While we enjoyed seeing an enterprising spirit is thriving in rural China, te women were deafly persistent to the point that I felt like Pac Man fleeing those pesky mulri-colored ghosts.

While I might compare our experience to a video game, the area was completely devoid of the kitchy music and flashy nuiances of the games. The Longji Rice Terrace is simply peaceful and a place where a person could completely lose herself for a much time needed.