One of the southeast of Guizhou, the style of Zhaoxing Dong village, the charm of returning to simplicity in the habitat

One of the southeast of Guizhou, the style of Zhaoxing Dong village, the charm of returning to simplicity in the habitat

On May 10, 2021, I arrived at Congjiang Station by bullet train, and was greeted by a Dong woman, wearing a white Dong costume (in the next two days, she changed into a red and a green Dong costume), with a bun on her head. There is a wooden comb in the topknot. According to my current knowledge, I can conclude that she is a married woman.

The Drum Tower of the Dong Village is a unique public building in the Dong minority area. You can see the Drum Tower from the platform of the Jiangxi High-speed Railway Station. Many people excitedly patted it when they got off the train. After sitting in the car and driving for more than 10 minutes, the Drum Tower passed by the window. The Drum Tower Group here is unique among Dong villages all over the country, and is known as the "Hometown of Drum Towers".

Zhaoxing Dong Village is the core scenic spot of Liping Dong Township Scenic Area. In 2005, it was selected as one of the "Six Most Beautiful Ancient Rural Towns in China" by "China National Geographic" and in 2007, it was jointly selected by "Fashion Travel" and "National Geographic" of the United States. Selected as one of the "33 most attractive tourist destinations in the world".

I forgot to mention that this is the branch venue of the 2018 Spring Festival Gala, so it became famous.

Zhaoxing Dong village covers an area of ​​180,000 square meters, with more than 1,000 households and more than 6,000 people. It is one of the largest Dong villages in the country and is known as the "No. 1 Dong Village in Dong Township".

When you arrive at the gate of the scenic spot at the branch venue of the Spring Festival Gala, you have to take a battery car to get to the village. We got off the battery car, dragged the suitcase, walked on the main road, walked through the alleys, and walked on the bumpy gravel road for about 20 minutes before we arrived at the inn where we stayed. We lived in the scenery. .The inn is a wooden building with almost no sound insulation effect. The sound of footsteps walking upstairs can be heard clearly...

Let me talk about the Drum Tower first.

The Drum Tower built in the Dong village is a symbol of auspiciousness and prosperity, and it was built by the whole village with funds raised.

The Drum Tower is the symbol of the Dong village and the surname of the Dong nationality. The effect of the Drum Tower is great! It is a place for Dong people to relax; a place for young people to socialize; a place to receive guests; an important place for gatherings; a tool for transmitting information or calling the police;

There are different opinions on the origin of the Drum Tower. According to folklore, during the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang set up camp in the Dong township during his southern expedition. For the convenience of commanding, he built a high pavilion in the camp with a built-in bronze drum to convey orders with the sound of the drum, so it became known as the Drum Tower. Another theory is even more magical. It is said that the Drum Tower is a relic left by aliens on the earth. Ancient aliens came to Dong Township and built rocket and flying saucer launchers. The shape of the Drum Tower resembles a bracket for launching a rocket, and the section of the attic on the top floor is just like the shape of a flying saucer. It was built by the ancestors of the Dong nationality according to the architectural model of aliens. In the lyrics of the Dong singers praising the Drum Tower, the sentence "that day the gods went down to the world to give gift money" is thought-provoking.

The tour guide Xiaoshi said that there are five drum towers in the Zhaoxing Dong village, which are called benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith. Sure enough, the tour guide said that the Dong people also believed in Confucius, which made me a little different. Don’t the Dong people have their own beliefs? How did you move out of Confucius?

The Zhaoxing Dong Village is divided into internal surnames and external surnames, and external surnames are all Dong people with the Lu surname. It is divided into five major houses, which live in five natural areas, and are called "tuan" locally. It is divided into five groups: benevolence group, righteous group, ritual group, intellectual group and letter group. There are five drum towers, five flower bridges and five opera stages in the five regiments in Zhaizhong. The appearance, height, size and style of the five drum towers are different, and they are magnificent.

The tour guide said that the five drum towers are designed in the shape of a sailboat. Anyway, you can't see it from a head-up view. It is estimated that you need a drone or aerial photography to see it.

The last set of pictures of drum towers, to be honest, I can't tell which one of the five drum towers it is.

Zhaoxing Dong Village is surrounded by mountains on all sides. The village was built in a basin in the mountains, and two small streams merged into a small river to pass through the village. The houses in the village are stilted buildings with stilts, row upon row, well-proportioned, all built with Chinese fir, and covered with small green tiles on the hard hilltop, which is simple and practical. A main street, a small river, is the whole village. By the riverside of the street, there are two rows of stilted stilted buildings in a patchwork pattern, and hundreds of families live and multiply here. The Dong nationality originated in Baiyue, but it is not known which branch of Baiyue it is. Later, many people from Jiangxi moved here to mix with the locals, and their blood has been passed down to this day.

The drum towers represented by each area are divided by different signs. There are about 1,000 households scattered throughout the Dong village, and the most streets are various inns, followed by local snacks, clothing, and utensils. Commercialization is infiltrating it.

On the small river passing through the village, five small and simple flower bridges were built to match the Drum Tower. The Flower Bridge, Drum Tower and Theater Tower of Rentuan and Yituan are unique in ingenuity.

There are still paintings on the flower bridge, which were painted when the bridge was built.

There are rare and spacious streets here, and three lanes are possible by visual inspection. The streets of ethnic minority villages I have seen before are very narrow and small, and one car cannot pass through the streets here. It is amazing that three cars can pass through the streets here. The tour guide said that 30 kilometers to the east is Sanjiang in Guangxi.

I asked the tour guide: Dong people always sing antiphonal songs when they are in love, and the lyrics are all freshly compiled, and they are very talented in singing. The tour guide said: Yes, and the Dong women do not have a dowry when they get married, and they can only get the dowry after giving birth to a child. This custom is very strange.

The Drum Tower here looks like a pagoda from the outside, with flying pavilions and double eaves, majestic. The whole building is a wooden structure building, using four large fir as the main pillars to reach the top floor, and another auxiliary pillar is hung horizontally and vertically on it, stretching around, and all of them are connected by wooden tenons. The traditional structure method is a Leigong pillar suspended in the center, four gold pillars as the main supporting pillars, and twelve eaves pillars around it, which symbolizes one year, four seasons, and twelve months, implying "everlasting".

In my opinion, no matter what the name of the drum tower is, they all look very similar, with little difference, and a little visual fatigue.

Wherever the Dong people live together, there must be bridges where there is water. There are corridors and pavilions on the bridges, which can be used for pedestrians and shelter from the rain. The old Drum Tower quietly watches the changes in the village, and the vicissitudes of the wind and rain bridge are covered with dark blue homespun cloth. Time seems to have never passed here.

When I first arrived in Zhaoxing Dong Village, I was greeted by a simple and simple wind, which made me feel refreshed and happy. As a tourist attraction, Zhaoxing Dong Village has been impacted by foreign culture to a certain extent, and inevitably has some commercial atmosphere, but fortunately, this commercial atmosphere is not strong. There are many local residents on the street, and most of the women wear their hair in circles on their heads. Some elderly Dong people still wear Dong national costumes, which adds an original ecology.

There are many shops for bacon, sausage, and beef jerky in the stockade, and there are also some small shops with Dong characteristics. There are also many "drumming life" music shops in ancient towns. The shopkeepers are playing drums and singing.

This Dong village, which is commercialized just right, does not shout or be overly enthusiastic. The old man who set up a stall sat quietly by the river, selling vegetables, fruits, and pork. When he saw tourists standing in front of the stall, he just smiled and said, "Just take a look," and then continued with the work of weaving and embroidery. .

Climbing the stairs to the viewing platform, you can see the whole picture of the village, the well-proportioned Dong village, the conspicuous drum tower, the blue sky and white clouds, surrounded by green trees, and the green paddy fields of different shades. This is really beautiful.

There are not too many tourists in Zhaoxing Dong Village, and the long guns and short guns are far less than the popular attractions, so it is relatively quiet.

For dinner, I ordered a bowl of oil tea, a portion of cucumber, and half a portion of rice cake. It cost 53 yuan per person for a meal, which is quite high. That bowl of camellia oleifera is quite a big one. The main ingredients are: camellia oleifera water made from tea leaves, peanuts, fried popcorn, chopped green onion, sugar, coriander, etc. It has an indescribable taste when you eat it. Too much to eat, what a waste.

In the early morning of the next day, the Dong village was quiet, and I heard the sound of the gurgling water of the small river. Where there is water, there is a bridge, and there are people living on the small bridge. Walking in the stockade, I feel very relaxed and happy. There are many wooden benches by the river, you can sit when you are tired from walking, you can also drink milk tea or yogurt, listen to the gurgling stream, and walk on the country path, I feel that the life that slows down like this is quiet and beautiful, and the quiet time can keep the lonely Heart, let you temporarily forget the boundaries of time and geography. Walking in the village, there will be an experience of returning to nature and returning to nature, which is intoxicating. Just look at it from a distance and see that there are many stilted buildings under construction. I am afraid that it will become a bustling commercial area in a short time. I hope that this day will come later, so as to retain the return to the original nature of the Dong village.

(2552 2021/5/15)