How do the Hani people utilize the natural conditions to produce and organize their lives?

The cultivation and labor of the Hani people are determined by the living conditions.

Most of the Hani people live in mountainous areas at an altitude of 800 to 2,500 meters above sea level and are mainly engaged in agriculture, with the terraced rice culture being particularly developed.

For thousands of years, in the face of high mountain valleys of living space, Hani people create, summarize a set of reclamation of terraced rice paddies rich experience. They build embankments and ridges according to different topography and soil quality, and utilize the natural condition of "how high the mountain is, how high the water is" to bring the year-round mountain springs and streams into the terraces through water pipes and ditches.

The terraces are an important source of food and clothing for the Hani people, so they especially treasure water. In order not to miss the farm time, since ancient times there has been "carved wood fixed water" of the people's covenant: according to a spring can be irrigated area, people friendly consultation, the formulation of each field should be the amount of water, according to the flow of water through the field of the sequence, in the ditch and the field of the entrance to the set a horizontal wood, and in the horizontal wood will be the amount of water that field should be engraved position, let the water flow into the field. flow into the field on its own.

Basically, it is a primitive slash-and-burn way of working, with occasional soil erosion, but it is negligible compared to the ecological damage caused by our large-scale industrial development.