Tang'an Dong Village 堂安侗寨

About Tang'an Dong Village

Liping County's own scenic-area summary describes Tang'an as a Dong ecomuseum set up jointly by China and the Kingdom of Norway, with more than 800 Dong villagers living in it. The provincial government agreed on 9 December 1999 to establish the Guizhou Liping Tang'an Dong Ecomuseum at the village, and it opened formally on 18 May 2005. An ecomuseum of this kind, as the provincial CPPCC newspaper explains it, conserves and shows a settlement's building pattern, overall character and working life together with its environment rather than gathering objects into a gallery. The village lies below 1,000 metres on the mid-slope of a hill the newspaper names Nongbaoshan, with hills around it and open terraced fields on the side that falls away.

Dwellings are stilt structures set to the line of the slope, and the county lists the surviving fabric as the drum tower, the opera stage, stilt-house dwellings, flagstone paths, a group of old graves, old gourd-shaped wells and working gear such as water mills, stone mortars and spinning wheels. The drum tower is treated as the village's emblem and forms a set of three with the opera stage and the singing ground. Gates were built at each of the nine roads leading out of the settlement, and other village structures include rice-drying racks, granaries, fish ponds, well pavilions and a sa-altar pond. Lanes run through in all directions and the passageways are paved with blue flagstone.

What to look for

• The drum tower at the centre of the village, which the county pairs with the opera stage and the singing ground as a set of three.
• The piao well above the village, where a spring that runs all year fills a squared handled basin cut from bluestone and set on a polygonal stone plinth; the name comes from its likeness to a wooden gourd dipper.
• The terraces below the village, built up from stacked stone rather than cut into earth as terraces elsewhere are.
• The burial ground in the middle of the village, a dozen or so graves mostly of Qing date, carved with dragons, phoenixes and scrolling foliage.
• The village gates standing at the nine roads out, and the working fabric around them, including rice-drying racks, granaries, water mills and stone mortars.

Location & getting there

Getting to Tang'an Dong Village

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 堂安侗寨 with 黔东南苗族侗族自治州 and 黎平县.