Village women, all dressed in straw hats and sarongs, harvest rice near Jinghong. The region is known as Sip Song Panna, meaning twelve thousand irrigated fields. The fields grow mainly wet rice, but also tobacco. Water buffalo still do much of the plowing, although increasingly threshers, small tractors, and other farm vehicles are used.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, the National Geographic book Journey Into China, 1982)