Liping Zhaoxing Folk Culture

Zhaoxing Dong Village is surrounded by mountains. The village is built in the narrow strip of the mountain basin, and a small river passes through it. The houses in the village are all on stilts, row upon row, strewn at random, all covered with Chinese fir and covered with small blue tiles, which is simple and practical.

Zhaoxing Dong Village is divided into five clans and five natural areas, which are called Rentuan, Yituan, Liyuan, Zhituan and Xintuan respectively. Today's Zhaoxing Dong Village, after thousands of years of history, still retains its unique original features.

In order to appreciate the grandeur of Dong Village, we must find the commanding heights. There are mountains on both sides, but the best shooting spot is in middle school.

The middle school is located on a hill that is not too high. On the edge of the playground, I set up a camera and took a panoramic view of Dong Village, among which five drum towers were clearly identifiable. According to the doorman, the panoramic photos taken here contain 90% houses, which is easier to find and walk than other shooting points. No wonder when I registered in the duty room at the door, I saw that almost all the registered visitors were photographers. Zhaoxing is most famous for its Drum Tower Group, which is unique among Dong villages in China and is known as the "hometown of Drum Tower". The building of the Drum Tower absorbed the essence of ancient Han architecture and broke through the convention of the tower. The lower part is square or hexagonal, the tile eaves are polygonal, and the cornices are thick like pagodas, which are very eye-catching. Drum Tower is a place for Dong family gathering and entertainment, and also a symbol of Dong village. Drum tower has a long history, beautiful shape, unique structure and diverse uses, and has very important historical, scientific, artistic and national and folk cultural relics value. Zhaoxing Dong Village has five drum towers, five flower bridges and five stages. The five drum towers are named after five regiments, with different appearances, heights, sizes and styles.

The planes of the five drum towers are all hexagonal. Zhizhai, Xinzhai and Zhai Yi Drum Tower are all eleven floors, Renzhai Drum Tower is seven floors, and Lizhai Drum Tower is thirteen floors. A pyramid roof with octagonal tops. A gourd-shaped tower gate is placed at the top. There are carved beams and painted buildings in the Drum Tower, and many books have couplets.

It was not a festival and there was no rally. The role of the Drum Tower is only for people to rest. I saw a bench in the Drum Tower, full of women flying needles. The old woman was talking about Kan Kan, and the old man was playing chess (the chess pieces were made from local materials, and the chessboard was casually drawn). Two people went down the mountain in the drum tower of Zhizhai, and there were five or six onlookers. In order to understand the folk customs and daily life of the Dong people, I have made many trips from west to east and from east to west. A street and highway across Zhaoxing in the middle is the only way between Liping and Sanjiang, and it is also a commercial street in Zhaoxing. But I come and go more through houses on both sides of the river parallel to it. Dong Bu is hung everywhere here, and women can be seen playing cloth everywhere.

Dong cloth, which is used to make Dong clothing, is made by spinning cotton into thread and hand-made with a soil loom. Then dip-dye it into cyan or deep purple, dry it, stack it together, put it on a smooth stone and beat it repeatedly with a mallet to beat the oil inside the cotton to the surface of the cloth to increase the hardness and brightness. The longer the beating time, the brighter the surface and the more expensive Dong Bu. Outside a house, I watched the woman play cloth for ten minutes.

It takes a lot of effort to make a piece of Dong cloth in the hands of the old Dong people, especially the Dong skirt worn by girls. Hand-folded into dozens of fine pleats, after long-term extrusion and shaping, it became a short-pleated Dong skirt. Starting from the cloth, it takes almost three months to make a Dong skirt. So, expensive. Even if local people buy it, it will cost several hundred yuan a set.

It is too complicated and time-consuming, so that nowadays Dong girls rarely make Dong clothes by themselves, and even many girls can't do this craft. They usually like to wear casual clothes bought in the city, and only wear Dong clothes made by their mothers on holidays. At present, those cheap and gentle imitation clothes are occupying young people's wardrobes. Some people worry: If this continues, will the Dong cloth craft be lost? When it became a national scenic spot, tourists from home and abroad poured in, and people's ideas in the stockade also changed. Tourists not only take away the tranquility here, but also take away the gaudy flowers outside. When I left the river bank and walked in the street, it seemed that I had returned to the market town in my hometown. Meat stalls, food stalls, fish stalls, everything. Supermarkets and travel agencies have also seen several. Of course, hotels and restaurants are the most. Dong people who face the street have opened shops or restaurants on the first floor of their homes; Many people have their own family hotels. I'm staying at the "Wu Jia Ke Gui" hotel. Although the standard room for two people is small, it is also "fully equipped". 50 yuan has only one room. For small hotels that are blooming everywhere, it is also very happy to get business, because there are many brand-new mid-range hotels on the street. It is said that many young people who used to work outside the home have gone home to do business in recent years.

But if one day, the reinforced concrete here exceeds the Chinese fir tile, the building is taller than the Drum Tower, the popular songs drown out the Dong songs and the Dong cloth disappears, will this national scenic spot still exist? Will people still travel far? I hope I worry too much.