Dayangjie Hani Village in Honghe County

Title
The top two of China's Six Most Beautiful Towns and Villages.

Dayangjie Hani Village in Honghe County, Honghe (Red River) Hani and Yi Nationalities Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province: Cooking smoke reflected in a thousand mirrors.

Honghe Hani & Yi Autonomous Prefecture, founded on 18 November 1957. It is named after the Honghe River, which flows across its cities and counties. The Honghe River flows from the west to the east across the prefecture. Found in this area are dense tropical rain forests like many green peaks rising one higher than another, immense variety of Karst landforms, many deep mirror-like plateau lakes, magnificent views of seas of clouds in the valleys and ravines, tiers upon tiers of terraced fields which reach to the sky, and rich rare-metal resources renown home and abroad.

This place, in the heart of the Ailao Mountains, is called Dayangjie and is located in Honghe County, Yunnan Province. Its inhabitants are known as the Yeche, a branch of the Hani ethnic minority. The Ailao Mountains are an eastern spur of the Yingling Mountains, the wartershed between the Hengduan Mountains in the west of Yunanan and the plateau in the east of the province. Moist warm air currents moving eastward from the Indian ocean meet barrier of the Ailao Mountains where they are transformed into abundant rain and fantastic cloud sea spectackes, moisteningand nurturing the splendid terraces on the Ailao Mountains.

Many ethnic groups live in the Ailao Mountains. The Dai ethnic group living on the riverbanks has turned the poor land along the riverbanks into rich farmland. The Yao ethnic group lives in the mild river valley, where many fruits and edible mushrooms grow. The Yaos also have their own traditional medicinal herbs. The Miao ethnic group lives in the mountains. The Miao women are good at tie dying and embroidery.