Friday 10/24/14 - Zhaoxing Dong Village

We woke up at 5:45 a.m., showered, packed, and went down to breakfast. There was one very pushy young Chinese woman who muscled her way into the buffet line in front of us, and deliberately stood in Craig's way preventing him from getting his noodle fixings. A Chinese guest noticed what she was doing and shoved her out of the way. She also went up to the back side of the buffet so she didn't have to wait, though noone else did, and then she left the serving utensils on that side so that nobody else could reach them. We made sure to choose a table far away from her, as she was driving us nuts.

A couple of Chinese men sat at our table with us. They offered us a hardboiled egg, and they got a plate of dragonfruit to share. They were very sweet. When I had trouble picking up the slippery dragonfruit chunks with my chopsticks, they brought over some toothpicks to make for easier serving.

We checked out of the hotel after breakfast, and hit the road at 8:30. At first we were on small, windy, bumpy roads. Today we would be visiting the Dong ethnic minority, and Wang Jun gave us some background information about them. The Dong have only been recognized as their own group for the past 400 years. Before that, they were classified as a subgroup of the Miao. Their specialty is weaving as opposed to embroidery. Their architecture is well-known for their covered bridges and drum towers. The Dong creation story is quite different than those of other ethnic minorities in China. They believe that humanity was wiped out and only a brother and sister remained. They got married and had a monstrous baby. They cut it up into little pieces and threw it away. Each piece became a different ethnicity (Han Chinese, Miao, Yao, Dong, etc.)

Wang Jun told us a ridde:
What is more powerful than God
More horrible than the devil
Poor people have it
Rich people need it
If you eat it you will die?
We were stumped by this. Craig said that Gollum would have eaten him by now in the Hobbit riddle game. I kept thinking humility (humble pie?) but knew that wasn't right. Wang Jun told us that Harvard students puzzled over it for weeks, but that kindergarten kids could get it right away. We eventually gave up. The answer? Nothing. Brilliant!

Soon we were on the expressway, and I started to type in my notes. We stopped at a USmile service station for gas and a bathroom break at around 10:30. Back on the expressway, we noticed how it cuts straight through the landscape, regardless of topographical features. The road would cut through the mountains via tunnels with lengths of several kilometers (the longest we went through was 4.358 km!) These tunnels were strung together via bridges. It was obvious that travel in this region must have been much more difficult and time-consuming before the advent of this freeway. It was difficult for me to type up my notes as we kept going from darkness into light and back again as we drove through the tunnels.

We pulled off the expressway in Rongjiang for lunch. There was a statue of a female gymnast and a vaulting horse on the way into town, and the train station across the street from our lunch restaurant bore the Olympic rings. The city is home to the Rongjiang Juvenile Children Amateur Gymnastics Sports School.

As we ate our lunch, their were kung fu movies on the restaurant's TV. We had mushroom sooup, pork with fungi, pork with long beans (green beans), a local pork specialty with chilies, and spicy chicken. Craig had a beer and I had a JDB. I am not normally a mushroom eater, but on this trip, I gained a new appreciation for the fungi.

After lunch, we got back onto the expressway and drove to Zhaoxing. On the ride, we talked about Craig's multiple sclerosis, and Wang Jun is interested to research whether there are any Chinese herbal treatments (Little did we know that 6 months later, Craig would have a consultation with a doctor of Chinese medicine while on a Yangtze river cruise).

We arrived at Zhaoxing at around 3:15 p.m. This is the largest Dong village in China - 1000 households and around 6000 inhabitants. It is believed to have been first established in 1160. The village sits nestled in a valley surrounded by 1,000 meter peaks. There is a river running through it. There were five major communities in Zhaoxing (running along clan lines), named after the fuve virtues of Confucianism: Faith, Wisdom, Propriety, Righteousness, and Benevolence. Each community has its own drum tower and wind and rain bridge, dating back 200 years.

We stopped at a large visitor's center to pay our entrance fee. There are large parking lots in this area, as well as karaoke bars and restaurants. This once-remote village is now accessible by the expressway, and is beefing up its tourism infreastructure to accommodate the more mobile Chinese middle class tourists. In order to preserve the integrity of the old village, they don't allow tourist traffic to drive through. Instead, you enter on foot through a newly-built park area. There are wind and rain bridges and drum towers here, recently built in the ancient style. There are nice walkways and benches surrounding a man-made lake.

With this entrance, we almost felt like we were entering a Disney park. Except once we got beyond the entrance plaza, we were in an authentic village, where people still live and work. We were driven partway to our hotel in a golf cart. We then walked the rest of the way, carrying our luggage. The Zhaoxing Hotel was, like most traditional buildings, built of fir planks.

The hotel had multiple locations, streets apart. This was the "VIP" section. It looked pretty rustic, so this moniker amused us a bit. Wang Jun told us about a time when he and another driver stayed at the hotel. The driver had some alcohol with dinner and snored. The walls are thin because it is built in traditional Dong style architecture, and all of the guests were awoken by the noise and went to the office in their pajamas to ask if there was a buffalo in the hotel or if pigs were being killed. Since then, Wang Jun and drivers have stayed in the non-VIP section, which is several small streets away. But today they were upgraded to the VIP section. Wang Jun told us that Mr. Zhou snores too, and so don't be alarmed if we thought we heard the sound of pigs crying in the middle of the night. LOL!

We walked up the staircases to our room (#310). With each step that we took, the staircase creaked and groaned. We got settled into room 310. It had a nice patio out front with a view of the village rooftops. The floorboards in our room squeaked, and the walls were made of 3/4" rough milled fir planks. It was obvious that there would be no privacy at all in this place. The hotel room contained the same type of fire hoods as our previous high-rise hotels. This place had the addition of a length of rope. It seemed that if the place went up in flames, we were expected to put on our masks, hang the rope out the window, and climb down three stories. I was in trouble if this was the case! We all know that I can't support my own body weight on a rope. But the hotel had air conditioning and hot water, so although it was a bit rustic, it suited our needs just fine.

We then met Wang Jun to take a quick tour of the village. There was a drum tower and a small wind and rain bridge right outside of our hotel. They are built of fir, without the use of nails or rivets. The wind and rain bridge had benches along the edges, and paintings of Dong cultural activities.

Drum towers have an odd number of levels. There was traditionally a drum at the top to warn of invasion or announce important news. The drum tower was a meeting place: men would get together to talk and play chess, young couples would court one another. A fire burns in the center of the drum tower, and the four columns surrounding it represent the seasons. Twelve additional columns on the perimeter to represent the months. The details of the sacred architecture are so interesting.

The drum towers looked almost like layer cakes, as the exteriors were painted with various colroful motifs on a white background, reiminscent of icing. The wind and rain bridges also had this type of adornment.

We walked around the historic part of the village along walkways made from a combination of pavers and small river rocks placed perpendicular into concrete forming various shapes. The late afternoon sunlight was gorgeous on all of the fir buildings. We could see buildings , drum towers, and wind and rain bridges reflected in the river.

Meanwhile, village life played out on the streets. Children played. People dried chili peppers and sticky rice in the sun. A woman hung indigo cloth to dry on a clothesline. The Dong dye their cloth in indigo several times. They then set the dye with pig's blood and egg whites, and then they pound the cloth with a mallet. I tried to get a photo of an older gentleman pounding the cloth, but his wife made him stop and demanded money for a photo, so we moved on.

We saw opera stages above shops in the fir buildings. They are open air and pre-date the Beijing (Peking) Opera. We passed a building contgaining two pool tables. Young boys were playing pool and smoking cigarettes.

Then we walked back to the newly constructed entrance area. A woman was folding up an extremely long swath of indigo cloth which had been drying on the ground in the sun. Wang Jun decided to check out the brand new Dong Cultural Museum here. Craig and I preferred to explore the old village some more, while the beautiful late afternoon light made for good photo opportunities. We befriended some children that we encountered, and we browsed in some of the shops.

Craig liked a painted carved wooden mask in one of the shops. Though the woman insisted it was Dong, we were pretty sure it wasn't. But it was definitely Chinese, and would make a good addition to our collection, so we bargained and bought it anyway. (Wang Jun would later confirm that it is not Dong in origin).

It had started to get dark, and the drum towers and wind and rain bridges were nicely illuminated with yellow light, so we wandered around photographing them. There were many bats flying around, eating the mosquitoes. We befriended an elberly gentleman who was smoking a pipe on the bridge.

We met Wang Jun and Mr. Zhou at Dong Lady's Long Table Banquets restaurant for dinner at 6:50. Wang Jun had told us that the proprietor had won an international prize for her chicken soup. The restaurant was humble and unassuming, made of the traditional fir planks, and decorated with red paper lanterns. The prize-winning soup bubbled away on a gas burner on our table. It was quite tasty, yet a bit difficult to eat, as the chicken had bones. We also had sweet potato greens, eggplant, a spicy chili dish, and local Dong specialty puffed rice in broth (think Rice Krispies in beef bullion, but better). I had JDB and Craig had a beer.

At 7:30, we walked down the street to the performance area for the evening's Dong cultural show. A couple of little boys talked to us and posed for photos. A family sat next to us and got our photo. Almost all of the tourists here were Chinese. They were on vacation just like we were, and they wanted to post photos with foeigners on WeChat.

A little girl whom we had photographed earlier on the bridge was there wth her parents and she got up on the stage and was dancing in the spotlights before the performance began.

The performance started at 8 o'clock. The group from this village won an international contest in France for its polyphonic singing, and we could see why. The a capella singing was phenomenal. It reminded us a bit of Tuvan throat singing, the only other form of polyphonic singing that we have really encountered. The sounds coming from the men and women onstage seemed unnatural. It was mesmerizing. The women were wearing knee-length, pleated indigo skirts, white blouses, and silver jewelry and headdresses. Indigo gaiters were tied around their calves with ribbons. The men wore shiny pants and turbans, with embroidered jackets.

There were many costume changes, dances, musical instruments, and some comedic slapstick skits. It was a great performance. At the end, Wang Jun had us both go up and dance in a circle holding hands with the dancers and other tourists.



Dong Polyphonic Singing


We said goodnight to Wang Jun and Mr. Zhou, and we decided to walk around the village some more. Vendors were cooking food on the street, and people were sitting at tables eating and drinking. Several groups invited us to join them for a drink. It was very hospitable of them, but we poitely declined. In our wanderings, whom should we meet but Wang Jun and Mr. Zhou. They asked if we had gone down to the new section of town since it had gotten dark, and said that it was worth seeing.

They walked with us to the village entrance. All of the newly-built traditional-style architectural elements were lit up, and they looked beautiful reflected in the lake. KTV, a karaoke bar, was hopping, and music was blaring out. It was a stark contrast to the polyphonic singing that we had just witnessed. It underscored the dichotomy of this 800-year-old village crashing into the modern world. With all of this new infrstructure (expressways, etc.), it reminded us of the establishment of U.S. interstate highways in the 1950's. The Chinese are now much more mobile, and have easy access to areas like this, which were fairly isolated until recent years.

We hope that the establishment of tourist infrastructure in Zhaoxing is sustainable, and benefits the people of the village, allowing them to continue to live their traditional lives in modern times without exploitation.

Unfortunately, this area smelled of noxious fumes from burning plastic or styrofoam, so we got a bit lightheaded until we went back toward the old village (where we could not smell it at all).

We sat under the wind and rain bridge next to the hotel. There were spiderwebs near the spotlights, and we saw the spiders eating their prey.

We got back to the hotel shortly before 10 o'clock. As we climbed up the staircase, every creaked echoed through the silent hotel. When we entered our room, we were careful to step very queitly. We didn't even shuffle our luggage around. We could hear people in other rooms coughing as if we were in the same room with them. I quietly downloaded my photos to my computer, and wrote in my journal. We went to bed at 11:20.




Zhaoxing Dong Village


Lunch in Rongjiang: Look who is enjoying mushrooms!

Lunch in Rongjiang: Look who is enjoying mushrooms!

Zhaoxing Dong Village architecture: drum tower, wind and rain bridge

Zhaoxing Dong Village architecture: drum tower, wind and rain bridge

Drum tower adornment

Drum tower adornment

Indigo cloth is stiffened in pigs' blood and egg whites then hung to dry

Indigo cloth is stiffened in pigs' blood and egg whites then hung to dry

A man collects water next to the wind and rain bridge

A man collects water next to the wind and rain bridge

Horse cart

Horse cart

Drum tower

Drum tower

Award-winning ployphonic singing

Award-winning ployphonic singing

Dong cultural show

Dong cultural show

A photo with a performer

A photo with a performer

The new section of town

The new section of town

The new section of town

The new section of town



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