What a gift to have a rest day on these trips! We rode for six consecutive days, this is the only day off, we ride for seven consecutive days after this.

Zhaoxing is the largest Dong village in the area, and it has developed a lot in the last few years as a world heritage site destination. There is a large cultural center here now, there were about 20 separate rooms dedicated to each important component of Dong life and culture. Rooms for history, birth, death, eating, building houses, weddings, making clothing, making rice wine, pretty much every component of traditional Dong life was addressed. It was very informative, the only museum type place we’ve visited that had English captions as well as Chinese. Dong make up .22% of the total Chinese population.

Of note on our morning walk about town, there were two large pigs slaughtered under the drum tower just across from where we are staying. You could hear their last squeals clearly. An unusual thing to hear… As we walked down toward the gathering, the pigs were already being butchered open, it was fascinating to watch that process. A true reminder of where food actually comes from… (Standing joke is that Dong People eat everything from the pig except the squeal!)

All of the food was being prepared for a funeral celebration today. It has been going on all day, it started with the butchering, hanging the meat, prayers for the dead, lots and lots of fireworks going off about every five minutes, and traditional music being played, and now the meat being cooked over open fire. The fireworks are holy shit loud, and they haven’t stopped all day! Thousands and thousands of firecrackers going off all at the same time, and then larger louder single booms in series of three. Fascinating to see how death is celebrated in different cultures. And the general rule here is that if you died a natural death, you are put in a wooden coffin in a burial area, usually above ground. If you died an unnatural death of some sort, you are generally not allowed to be buried in the traditional burial ground and you will be cremated.

The other thing dong are known for is indigo fabric. The process is to grow indigo plants; you take the shaft of the plant and keep it in water, eventually the color comes out as deep blue dye. Fabric that is woven by the people here is dyed 4 to 5 times in this indigo dye to make it an extremely dark, almost black bluish color. Then it is pounded with wooden mallets until it becomes shiny and iridescent; sometimes egg white is added to make it even more shiny. An interesting process, and the fabric is used for all the traditional clothing, pants, shirts, coats, hats, etc. Detailed hand stitched embroidery is added to give the clothing a bright and festive appearance. You’ll see in some of the pictures below some fabric hanging to dry, also some buckets with indigo dye in it. Very interesting process…

Also in pix below, the drying bushels are sticky rice, a particular rice well developed over 1000 years by the dong and is a main staple of their diet. Their motto is every meal has something sour (fermented), sticky rice, rice wine, and tea!

Wandered around town a little bit, now back in the room for a brief respite, maybe close my eyes for a few minutes… Some pictures from here…