Customs of Dong people: Believe in mountain gods, land gods, water gods, well gods, tree gods, stone gods, fire gods, and thunder gods; they are hospitable, take wine as a gift, take wine as a pleasure, and usually use wine to eliminate fatigue.
Features: The Dong people use self-spun, self-woven and self-dyed Dong cloth as the clothing material. Women’s hair styles are divided into buns in the front, back, left and right, or braids on the top of the head. The villages where the Dong people live generally have the characteristics of being close to mountains and rivers.
The Dong people are mainly distributed in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture and Tongren area in Guizhou Province, Xinhuang Dong Autonomous County, Huitong County, Tongtong Dong Autonomous County, Zhijiang Dong Autonomous County, Jingzhou Miao and Dong Autonomous County in Hunan Province, Guangxi Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, Longsheng Autonomous County, Rongshui Miao Autonomous County in the Zhuang Autonomous Region, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hubei Province and other places.
The diet of the Dong people
The Dong people take rice as their staple food, and also eat millet, corn, wheat, sorghum, and potatoes, but they are usually mixed to adjust the taste. Meat is mainly domesticated livestock, including pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, etc. They especially like to eat fish. There are many varieties of vegetables, with vegetables, cabbage, radish, eggplant, cowpea, cucumber, pumpkin, winter melon, white melon and pepper being the most common. Women often go up the mountain to collect wild bamboo shoots, fungi, bracken, etc. to accompany their meals. Men hunt wild boars, bamboo rats, pheasants, birds, etc. for food during their leisure time.
Wine plays an extremely important role in the Dong diet. The wine is mostly made from glutinous rice, and every family brews and bakes it themselves. Dong people are hospitable and treat wine as a courtesy and pleasure, and they usually use wine to relieve fatigue. Glutinous rice, camellia oleifera, pickled sour fish and fish are the favorite traditional foods of the Dong people. These foods are closely related to ethnic customs and are recognized as Dong flavors.
In most areas, three meals a day are eaten. In many places, oil tea is eaten for breakfast, and lunch is called breakfast. When eating, a low table and short stools are usually set up, bowls and chopsticks are used, and the family eats around the table. There are special foods such as "ox flat", roasted fish, plasma duck, and red meat.
Entertain guests with "oil tea", "sour banquet" and "closed rice".
Dong buildings
Dong villages are generally located surrounded by mountains. There are layers of terraces beside the village, long streams at the foot of the village, and towering trees at the end of the village. The large Dong village has six to seven hundred households, and the small one has twenty or thirty households. Housing buildings in Dong villages are generally wooden buildings built with fir trees, ranging from small buildings with one to two floors to large tall buildings with three to four floors.
The Drum Tower is the most distinctive building in Dong Village. The average village has one to two buildings, and the larger ones have four to five. The Drum Tower is a wooden structure with double eaves. The construction technique combines the "dry well", "bucket style" and "lifting beam" techniques of Chinese wooden structures.
Where the Dong people live together, there must be a bridge wherever there is a river. Most of the bridges are built on the traffic thoroughfares in front of and at the end of the village, including wooden bridges, stone arch bridges, stone slab bridges, bamboo raft bridges, etc. Among them, the long-corridor wooden bridge named "Fengyu Bridge" or "Flower Bridge" is famous both at home and abroad for its unique artistic structure and superb architectural skills.