Yin tan Dong Village
Yin tan is a typical Dong village which is located in Congjiang county.This Dong village is my favorate ethnic village,Dong people wear their traditional clothing every day .They are good at dying cloth and every household keeps at least two wooden buckets for soak indigo .
Today is July 22, we lived in Congjiang Hotel yesterday.Three French gests feel congjiang is the most beatiful place than they ever seen,I agree with them.I told them today we are going to visit this Dong village is not far from our hotel,only twenty kilometers,but ten kilometers road is not asphaltum.In summer,we have to suffer from dust from this road.
After almost one hour drive, I asked our driver to stop the car.We got out off the car and stepped on a platform which is on the side of the road,a drum tower and a few housholds are surrounded by green hills came to our view.That French man could not help his feeling shouting Paradise!Paradise!
We went to village by foot.At the gate of the village,my gests stopped and asked me Johnny , what are two chinese charactors mean ? Their mean is a jar of silver also the name of the village .French man s little daughter asked me Why they name their village like that ? They must be very rich so they wanna show off their wealth .I explained the background of the name to her by a romantic story.Long time ago, a poor boy fell in love with a pretty gril and that gril also loves that honest boy.Every midnight,the gril were waiting for him in the forest,they were singing chating and dancing.They enjoyed loving, unfortunately,the gril s family found this.They could not agree such a poor boy marry their daughter so they arranged this gril to marry another boy whose family is rich.The gril has no choice but to steal a jar of silver from her household ,then she eloped with her lover.Finally,they choosed here as their destination,they spent this jar of silver buying wood to build house and raising their kids .In order to memorize this event,local people named here Yintan.
Dong people are very friendly to us,a lady said “ni hao” to us.She is so excited to see us because there is a few foreign gusts be here in Dong festival.In this village, a stream across the whole village and walk along the stream ,you could see lots of buckets which were full of indigo.Every local people knows how to dye cloth by indigo,their clothing was dyed by themselves and the rest dyed cloth they take along to market nearby to sell.
At a household,we saw a lady took dyed cloth out from a big bucket.then put them on a bamboo drainer.To dye cloth usually take two weeks and hanging them outside the balcony for a few days until they get dry.In sunny day,you would see dyed cloth show shinning under the sunshine.
Visiting the Dong village, we could not forget talking about the drum tower.The drum tower is landmark of the Dong village.If you see a village there is a drum tower,this village must be a Dong village.The drum tower’main function was watching tower in case enemy would attack the village,but now it is used for Dong people hold meeting,chatting and dancing and whatever.Dong people construct the drum tower without blueprint,all blueprints in Dong carpenters’ memory.The carpenter connect every log by mortise and tenon,one medium drum tower usually use almost 300 logs. It is not easy job.
