Mù Cang Chải is a district in the mountains of northern Vietnam where thousands of ribbon-thin rice terraces have been cut into the slopes by hand. For a few weeks each spring the whole staircase turns to mirrors. There is no machine up here and no reservoir either, and the second of those is what makes the place famous. In the pouring-water weeks of late May and June the Hmong wait for the rains, then lead the stream into the top field of a slope. It spills down terrace by terrace until the whole staircase stands puddled and ready to plant. For those few weeks every step you pass holds a sheet of sky. Once the mud is soft the water buffalo go in to break it, farmer and animal working each narrow step in turn, ankle-deep in the reflection.
Then the seedlings go in, the slopes turn plain green through the monsoon, and from mid-September the ripening paddy washes the mountains gold, the harvest running through October. You walk the terraces along their dikes, the narrow earth walls between the fields, into hamlets like La Pán Tẩn, where Hmong women in indigo cloth carry bundles of seedlings on their backs. Above the village a steep track climbs to Mâm Xôi, a round hill terraced to its crown like a mound of sticky rice. From the top the steps coil away from you in tightening rings, sharpest in low morning light. The road in crosses Khau Phạ, one of the four great passes of the northwest, usually wrapped in cloud, where the terraces run from under your feet down to the river in one sweep. Each harvest the pass launches a paragliding festival out over the ripening fields. At dawn the mist slides down the ridges and the low sun rakes across the steps. And when the first grain is cut, Hmong families offer it to their ancestors and to the spirits of the land — a year of hand-work on the mountain finally paying out.