TangAn village

The TangAn village is located about 6 km east of Zhaoxing, it is on the southern side of Mount Longte.

If you climb up the mountain from Zhaoxing, after 20 minutes you will be standing on the summit, the panaramic view of the village of TangAn is a wonderful phto opportunity!

If you go from Guilin/Sanjiang/Zhaoxing, ask your driver to drop you off at TangAn, follow your tour guide to walk around TangAn Village to Zhaoxing, where your driver will take your luggages for tonight's stay there.

The TangAn village is about 840 meters above sea level. It was first built in the Jiaqin years of Qing Dynasty (A.D 1795-1820). It is now home to over 170 households and more than 800 people. The Dong people live together in clans, and the two main clans being the Ying and Lu. They live scattered between the Banbo and Jiding ranges.

The Natural Environment and Culture Value of TangAn
The TangAn village is favorably situated on the ridges of the mountain, with all the buildings arranged along the contour line, and centered upon the drum tower and theater stage.

Dong villages are commonly situated at hill bottom and on banks of streams, but TangAn is different from ordinary Dong villages, located half way up the Mount Longte. Looking into the distance from the top of TangAn , you can see peaks spanning all over your vision field rising one higher than another, crisscross paths extends in all directions on the overlapping terraces.

From spring to winter, the village is enveloped with cloud and mist. There are about 100 wooden turrets spotting at the half way up the Mount Longbao, Mountain spring water runs all year round through the turrets and irrigates the terraces surrounding the village.

Around the village, a visitor should seek a wonderful sight of the winding and overlapping terraces. When the forefathers of Dong people dug terraces on steep slope from the button to the top of the mount, they built ridges of the terraces with locally bluestone. Behind the village, there is a special large terrace, with a long ridge of 5 meters height and 150 meters length.

Without written script of their own, in accordance of the oral instruction from generation to generation, the village TangAn now is more than 700 years old. Before the uprising at the area of Niudong led by Wu Mian in the 11the year of Hongwu of Ming dynasty (D.C. 1378), there had been more than 10 households lived at TangAn.

In the light of the ancient post road, bluestone paths, ancient graves, ancient dipper-shaped wells, terraces, and other elegant, simple and unsophisticated material objects, show a quaint and weather-beaten impression of TangAn. In addition, Dong folk songs and traditional custom here reflect the thick cultural sediment and special cultural value of TangAn.

Tangible Cultural Heritages
Being always elegant and cool deep in the mountains, the springs here have bubbled year and year. The history has brought up TangAn as an integrated Dong village. It is a distinctive feature for Dong villages that the people alays live together in clans, which include Pan, Ying, Lu, Wu and Yang. They all have lived here in harmony for generations.

TangAn Dong village is formed with following (wooden turrets), drum tower, garish bridge, drama stage, village gates, singing lawn, altar to the Goddess Shasui, dipper-shaped well, grain-drying shelf, grain storehouses, water-powered roller, stone pesties, oil-pressing mills, fishponds, well pavilion, ancient graves and some representative diary utensils etc. The drum tower and roofed bridge are the lavish features of TangAn Dong village, the emblem of unity and symbol of lucky.

The Dong Ethnic Eco-Museum in TangAn
For establishing a Dong ethnic eco-museum, cultural experts from China and Norway chose the village Tang’ an after their detailed analysis and research among a series of Dong villages...more details

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