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?