Dong Villages

Description

Shudong Village：N 26°06′22″, E 108° 55′21″

Dali Village： N 26°02′26″, E 108° 38′21″

Zadang Village: N 26°00′15″, E 108°38′38″

Village：N 25°57′37″, E 108°44′11″

Zengchong Village：N 25°54′55″, E 108°41′36″

Tang’an Village：N 25°54′03″, E 109°12′40″

Xiage Village：N 25°54′11″, E 109°12′07″

Gaoqian Village：N 25°51′18″, E 108°40′31″

Zhanli Village：25°50′38″N, 108°54′39″E

Ma’antun, Pingyan Village：N 25°53′37″, E 109°38′14″

Pingzhai, Pingyan Village：N 25°54′00″, E 109°38′20″

Yanzhai, Pingyan Village：N 25°54′25″, E 109°38′18″

Gaoxiu Village：N 26°09′26″, E 109°42′11″

Gaoyou Village：N 25°59′02″, E 109°52′35″

Gaoshang Village：N 26°01′37″, E 108°41′26″

Kezhong Village：N 26°01′37″, E 108°41′26″

Gaosheng Village：N 26°01′37″, E 108°41′26″

Yanglan Village：N 26°1.9′, E 109°52.4′

Pingtan Village：N 26°1.9′, E 109°52′

Hengling Village：N 26º04′04″, E 109 º43′18″

Yutou Village：N 26°08′19″, E 109°42′22″

Shangbao Village：N26°22′23″, E 110°07′46″

The nominated Dong Villages were located in southwest China, and under jurisdiction of Liping County, Rongjiang County and Congjiang County in Guizhou Province, Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Tongdao Dong Autonomous County and Suining County in Hunan Province.

Residing close to the water is the most important settlement pattern of Dong Villages. The houses are distributed on mountain slopes along rivers

The drum tower and Sasui (famous heroine of Dong Nationality) altar are the most important basic elements of a Dong village. The multi-storey drum tower, the symbol of a Dong village, is usually built in the flat or high grounds of the village center. A square is built in front of the drum tower, and provides a venue for the entire village to come together for meetings, festival celebrations, and other public activities. The typical residences of Dong people are called “Diaojiaolou”, stilt houses built with Chinese fir wood and consisting of three or four floors. They feature a wood column-tie structure, and a tiled roof, and are surrounded by corridors and railings. In some regions, the corridors and the eaves are respectively connected between houses. A large number of Dong Villages have fish ponds digged out in front and at the back of the houses and build a two-storey granary on stilts beside. The fish ponds are used to rear fish and for fire safety, features a waterside village.

The village road network uses public structures including village gate and drum tower as nodal points, the road between the gate and public structures is the artery with secondary paths leading to every household. The roads are mostly paved with stone slabs or embedded with pebbles. In large Dong Villages located beside the river, there is often a gate that leads to the waterside dock. Some village gates are integrated with drum towers, providing quite a magnificent view. Roofed bridges (Fengyuqiao) are often seen above the river. They are supported by stacked layers of wood that extends outward to widen the span and minimize shear force of major beams. On top of the bridge is a wooden-structure shelter with a tiled roof. Sometimes, pavilions are built on both ends of the bridge or at the location of the bridge piers.

On the periphery of the Dong village, one can usually find rows of wooden stands which are called “Heliang”, used to dry the grain. Outside of the village are usually paddy fields, with fish kept in water and featuring the co-existence of rice and fish. Such agricultural and breeding system achieves the ecological balance and can provide adequate and proper nutrition to villagers.

The intangible cultural heritage of Dong Villages is also remarkable and unique. The “Grand Song” of Dong Nationality has been inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The Dong Medicine and the living and production traditions, the autonomous administration of the villagers, the marriage and courtship customs, the funerary customs, music and drama, traditional costumes, weaving skills, etc. have all been well preserved.

Justification of Outstanding Universal Value

The nominated Dong Villages are located in six counties of three provinces (autonomous regions), and consist of 20 villages, covering the settlements where Dong cultural traditions have been well preserved. The nominated Dong Villages vary in their distribution regions, eco-environments, clans and branches, village landscapes, cultural characteristics, etc., which organically constitute a complete cultural value system of Dong Villages, which is distinct from other village cultural landscapes or agricultural landscapes domestically and abroad. Dong Villages are the representative of the cultural landscape of Chinese ethnic minority villages, and their Outstanding Universal Value are described as below:

Secondly, in the context of Dong cultural traditions, Dong people have created various architectural systems with distinct vernacular characteristics. The unique drum towers and the roofed bridges have been preserved for generations. The drum tower is an important type of wooden structure in the Far East. Dong Villages are a classic model of vernacular architecture heritage.

Thirdly, Dong Villages have preserved a wealth of cultural information thanks to its large number, wide distribution, and multiple clans. It is an integration of Dong tangible and intangible cultural heritages, an epitome of Dong social conditions including languages, festivals, song and dance, crafts, cuisine, customs, spiritual beliefs, social systems, etc., and is a living example of cultural anthropology.

Criterion (iii): The Dong Villages contain historical information of Dong people’s origin, migration and lifestyle in the region. It is a major database with large quantity of historical and cultural information and a concentrated reflection of Dong Nationality’s history and culture. These historical cultures still exist and continue to evolve after more than thousand years and bear a living testimony to an ethnic minority’s cultural tradition which is rapidly disappearing. It is also an important part of the world’s diversified culture.

Criterion (iv): The traditional architecture of Dong Villages, especially those for public use such as the drum towers and the roofed bridges, intensively reflect the traditional Dong construction skills and the cultural landscape in the Dong settlements. The ingenious combination of the single public structure and vernacular houses in Dong Villages represents the harmonious co-existence of the village and its natural environment. The architectural elements and landscape features have been adapted and promoted in settlements of Dong people and in other nationalities’ settlements, which became an outstanding example of regional architectural culture.

Criterion (v): The Dong Villages are a representative of a traditional human settlement lifestyle featuring Dong people’s adaption to nature and harmonious co-existence with the environment, and also an outstanding example of Dong people’s sustainable utilization of land and resources in the past nearly one thousand years. They are a manifestation of Dong people’s wisdom generated during the long-term production and living, and precious heritage of traditional agricultural civilization in the mountainous area. With the violent and rapid transformations brought about by modernization, urbanization and globalization, these Dong Villages have become one of rare “cultural solitary islands” retaining the age-old traditions.

Statements of authenticity and/or integrity

Authenticity

The nominated Dong Villages have all undergone hundreds of years’ development at their original locations, their spatial locations are relatively stable and the eco-environments have been well preserved. The development and expansion of the villages, dependent on the macro natural settings, has continuously maintained the authenticity of the location and environment. The public structures and vernacular houses are all built with timber and tree barks harvested from surrounding forests, employ traditional construction techniques and design, and are of classic Dong architectural form and style, thus having preserved the authenticity of materials and substance, design and form, traditions and techniques. Significant heritage elements including the Sasui altar, drum tower, public square, vernacular houses, granaries, roads, etc., are still in use and the authenticity of use and function has been well preserved.

The authenticity of the Dong language, festivals, song and dance, medicine, crafts and other intangible heritages has been well preserved in all the nominated Dong Villages, which make the Dong village culture distinct from those of the local and surrounding Han, Miao, Zhuang and other nationalities. The social life and organizational operation of the village have largely inherited the traditional village management mode which has a history of hundreds of years, thus having preserved the authenticity of its traditional system. The aborigines of Dong Villages have retained traditions of nature worship for mountains, rivers and trees, and the ancestor worship for Sasui (famous heroine of Dong Nationality) and ancestors of “major branches”. All these manifest the authenticity of Dong people’s spirit and emotion. It is especially important to emphasize that the core of the authenticity of Dong Villages as a classic model of living heritage lies in the indigenous people and their community, and this element is the carrier of the above three aspects of authenticity. The indigenous people and their community have maintained the authenticity of the extant tangible and intangible heritages of Dong Villages, and they will continue to pass on the authenticity in the future.

Integrity

Firstly, the nominated Dong Villages have maintained their own development law that has been continued for hundreds of years, without major influences from external environment and more powerful cultures. Therefore, the integrity of the development process of Dong Villages has been well preserved.

Comparison with other similar properties

1 Compared with Chinese village cultural landscapes that have been inscribed on the World Heritage List or Tentative List

In summary, the nominated Dong Villages as an organic entity, in comparison with typical villages or agricultural landscapes domestically and abroad, demonstrates unique cultural value: it  has rich outstanding tangible and intangible cultural contents, and has typical characteristics of living heritage. In the current days when modern industrial civilization has spread globally, Dong Villages of China as a living fossil of agricultural civilization and ethnic minorities’ and of traditional settlement cultures, possess outstanding cultural and anthropological values.