Chinese Wilderness in Guizhou: the Dong

Recently got back from some Chinese wilderness– went to Guizhou province for a weekend to see some soon to-be well known villages of Dong minority.


Zhaoxing Dong village, Guizhou

Dongs are famous for their architecture; two most prominent architectural structure types are:

A 'drum tower' – multi-layered roof tower used as a meeting place for the villagers. Roofs may be square, hexa - or octagonal with 4 and more layers (up to thirty!). Such towers used to house a hanging drum (hence the name), which was hit to announce a meeting or an emergency.


The largest drum tower in Zhaoxing village

'Wind and rain' bridge – a sheltered gallery-type bridge with beautiful towers on top and frescoes inside. Is aimed to be used as a common leisure place for villagers when the weather sucks – hence the name.


Wind and rain bridge in Diping, Guizhou

A Temple in Huangpu

More pictures from Huangpu, this series's about a temple.



The temple is a Buddhist one; it’s the only active temple we found in Huangpu.


airy courtyard with 'new year' orange trees


side altar devoted to Chinese Goddess of mercy - Guanyin


joss spirals burning in the front

Huangpu: Ancient Port of Guangzhou

Huangpu (黄埔) is a historic port village in Canton (now Guangzhou) that can be easily reached as a daytrip from the city. It’s a nice scenic spot worth checking out if you are into history or just want to get away from the city bustle.


Old Li clan temple in Huangpu

Prior to 1842 Canton was the only Chinese port open for foreign trade. With its ‘Middle Kingdom’ self-sufficiency concept imperial China thought it had no need in foreign goods thus opening just one port as a favor to foreign nations. The trade was only open for four month a year.
After Nanking treaty was signed four more ports were open to the trade, but Canton didn’t lose its significance.
Huangpu was the place where the warehouses stood and the customs was stationed. Silk, spices and tea were traded, ships loaded, Chinese merchants made fortunes, and foreign sailors took rest in opium dens with dark-eyed beauties by their sides. Numerous temples were erected to pay homage to the gods for growing prosperity.


Traditional cantonese door

Now it’s just a quite suburb in monstrous Guangzhou urban area, with some eclectic architecture - a mix of nice traditional houses and morden grey boxes, decaying temples, muddy waters and vast vegetable gardens worked by the locals.



It still has a nice atmosphere of a real thing – you can wander around, feel the age of the place, see people playing mahjong in old ansestral halls and relish upon fresh chicken and farm vegetables in local eateries.




Mahjong players

Weird Food in Guangzhou:Intro

There’s a famous Chinese saying about local eating habits:
"Cantonese will eat anything with four legs except a chair, anything that flies except an airplane, and anything that swims except a submarine".

Well, it’s actually true – Chinese people, and especially Cantonese as a quintessence of the omnivores, will eat almost everything. Here you can see all kinds of weird stuff to be eaten – from cockroaches to kitty cats (yes, sadly, they do).
No wonder this subjects arouses some interest from westerners living in China and beyond. I’m also curious about some weird stuff (yes, except the cats!) and don’t mind getting acquainted with it.

Here’s an example of 'weird food' for a start.



These little birds are deep-fried quails cooked whole in boiling vegetable oil. Sold a at a street fair for 5 quai a head a piece, 10 quai for three.



Yummy?

Lesser Known Guangzhou: Jinlun Guild Hall

On the way to Hualin Temple I came across one more lesser-known sight - Guangzhou Silk Guild Hall. It’s hardly ever mentioned in 'the sources', so it was a pleasure to stumble upon it.


photo from GoogleMaps

Jinlun Guild Hall was constructed in 1723 and rebuilt in 1844. It was originally the office of silk trading association of Guangzhou. Trading associations for different goods saw their development during Qing Dynasty along with the Maritime Silk Road, many of them built their own congregation halls serving as offices and meeting places. A shrine with Taoist or ancestral altar was an integral part of such buildings.



The building itself is ancestral temple type building with three consecutive halls and highly ornate roofs. Now the halls are almost empty except for some silk embroidery exhibition items and paintings for sale adorning the walls. Altars are gone, and side rooms house a stamp-carver’s workshop and a calligrapher. The structure itself is well-preserved and contains many original woodcarvings and carved stone inscriptions.



It’s the only guild hall building surviving in Guangzhou, out of dozens destroyed in turbulent times.
It’s also famous for its relocation and subsequent renovation project - in 2001, to make way for road widening, the Guild Hall was disassembled and moved northward by 80 meters, westward by 22.4 meters and elevated by 1.085 meters – a new word in Chinese traditional buildings’ preservation.



picture of relocation/renovation from lifeofguangzhou website


Jinlun Guild Hall (锦纶会馆)
Admission: 3 RMB
Location: South Kangwang Road, near the jade market
Metro: Chang Shou Lu

Hualin Temple: Lesser Known Guangzhou

Most people come to Guangzhou 'for business' - attend a fair, meet the suppliers, do some factory hopping. They virtually have no time to get acquainted with the city itself. And even if they do a couple of mainstream temples, a dim-sum restaurant and a river cruise will do it. Fortunately or not, I have more time, so the guidebook quickly runs out of sights. It's time to move further, get off the beaten trail. Here we go - some of the lesser known things come into mind. Some google, some baidu, and i have a destination for the weekend - Hualin Temple (华林寺).

According to the legend (and onsite signs) the temple was established in 5-6 century AD by Bodhidharma himself and was initially called 西来宫 (Xilai gong) - literally 'Temple of the guest from the West' .

Along with most of the religious structures in China it was heavily damaged (actually almost completely ruined) during the Cultural Revolution. Now only two halls survive - one was restored, the other is a replica made from scratch. The former houses giant golden Bodhidharma, the latter statues of 500 arhats - Buddhist saints who achieved enlightenment but decided to stay with the people to help relieve their suffering. One of the statues is said to depict Marco Polo who visited China in 13th century.



Well, nothing special, you'd say. I would have agreed if... if not the atmosphere. The thing is real - grannies come here with their grandchildren to teach them pray, shoppers from the nearby shopping street carry all the bags and sacks to give a quick bow, plump-faced 'serious' men buy giant joss sticks to burn (for some big sins, huh), youngsters with overgeled hair gaze at the flame and seem to think about life.

And it's free of charge! Very rare for a Chinese temple, the only one in Guangzhou that i saw so far.

Test

Decided to do some blogging about Canton, China where i currently live (well, Guangzhou now, but i do like the old name) and my travels around China and SEA.
We'll see if i'll have anough energy to keep it regularly amended))