CHINESE NEIGHBORS 中国邻居: Dong Ethnic Nationality Villages of Southwest Hunan

You're about to embark on a two-day excursion through the breathtaking Dong villages of the Pingtan River valley. We set out from Tongdao, following a twisting narrow road all the way to Longcheng.

map courtesy of Travel Cathay

Yutou Village 芋头寨

Unlike the other river-bottom villages further along in our itinerary, Yutou is set high in the mountains. After many switchbacks and constant hope of not meeting another car at the wrong moment, we made it to the village gate.

The Dong people, one of China's many distinct ethnic nationalities, are famous for their two architectural wonders: drum towers and wind & rain bridges, beautifully constructed without any nails. Each village has at least one drum tower which historically has served as a center of community activity. In winter the lower sides of the tower are covered with a tarp and a bonfire kindled for warmth.

Dong language is completely distinct from and unrelated to Mandarin Chinese, but younger and/or educated Dong people of course speak both languages and thus we are able to converse easily with many friendly people in the villages. This grandmother knows Mandarin Chinese numbers, so she could sell me her tea leaves.

This woman kindly allowed me to photograph her dining room, a record of historical movements and cultural diffusion. The woman who lives here is a Dong mountain villager, an ethnic minority, and citizen of Han-dominated China. She displays faded posters of Mao, Marx, Engels and Stalin. She has an old-style Double Happiness poster (双喜) for good fortune at the time of a wedding. In frames are photos of deceased ancestors in traditional Dong attire. Directly below that is a military poster with the most recent government slogan campaign, "The Chinese Dream" and a traditional lunar calendar. On the far right is a modern solar calendar featuring photos of her granddaughter.

Lunch of typical Dong dishes in a villager's home.

Use a gourd ladle to drink pure, delicious water directly from the ancient well.

Shrines are a common sight in every Dong village.

This photo does not capture the majestic beauty of the terraced mountain gully. Crisp air, smell of green, peaceful quiet, mountain peak shrouded in mist, terraces dotted with farmers -- every sense engaged -- I cried. It is so beautiful here. You can breathe.

Huangdu Village 皇都 (aka 黄土)

The Dong construct stunning wind & rain bridges without the use of nails. Puxiu Bridge (普修桥） of Huangdu is the site of the Tongdao crossing of the Red Army in 1934 on the infamous Long March. Mao Zedong made the decision to retreat westward, ultimately defeating the Nationalist Army under Chiang Kai-shek.

The Red Army crossed this very bridge! It is vibrantly painted with many shrines to several deities.

Huangdu is the most touristy of all the villages on our route. Visitors can in a very commercial way experience hallmarks of Dong culture: love of song and dance, skill in creating elaborate handmade cloth and embroidery, oil tea, and cock fights.

Huilong Bridge 回龙桥

Huilong Bridge, located near Hengling Village (横岭寨）is unique because it curves at it's second half. Remember these wind & rain bridges are constructed by villagers without nails! The spray-painted slogan is difficult to make out; it says something about building socialism.

The interior also has several shrines, including this one which has been desecrated by the above spray-painted statement, "Eliminate Superstition!"

Pingtan Village 坪坦寨

Pingtan is the central and largest village along the Pingtan River bottom. It has a community building and a wide pavilion and for song and dance festivals and enormous banquets.

We are only beginning to learn the polytheistic belief system of the Dong people. In the photo above, at center is an altar to the bodhisattva Sa (萨). A elderly man informed me that Sa is a different diety than the most high god Sa Sui (萨岁). To the right is a Confucian temple that had a small lending library inside, to the left a drum tower with a Buddhist temple attached. Below is another small temple located in the midst of residential Pingtan -- I believe this is a Daoist temple but I've yet to confirm that.

These lovely girls, cousins, kindly offered to take me to the pavilion and briefly acted as cultural informants -- though as is typical of their generation, they could not articulate Dong religious traditions and beliefs.

I lost Drew and the boys in Pingtan, without a phone. I tried to track them and asked these boys in a drum tower for help, but alas, they could speak only Dong language.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?

Pingtan Primary School.

Jielong Bridge 接龙桥

The road is getting narrower, and so is the Pingtan River as we follow it backwards through the valley. The road is so tight that our driver was about three centimeters from a blind-curve crash into another vehicle. Along our route we pass by and through several villages not included on our map, and many old, astonishing bridges decorating the rice paddies. I was constantly gasping in awe. If we had stopped to take a photo of every bridge the local driver would have been annoyed. So just this one.

Zhongbu Village 中步寨

The last stop on our itinerary, the reason we've trekked all the way to Zhongbu, is to see it's unique bridge, which has a separate passageway designated for livestock. Looks like that black hen knows the protocol.

The tiny village also has a Buddhist temple adjacent to the bridge, some community buildings and a recreational pavilion.