Chengyang Eight Villages
Chengyang Eight Villages is a tour for experiencing the Dong ethnic culture. It is in Sanjiang Dong autonomous county, and 19 miles away from the county center. This attraction is surrounded by green mountains and trees, and has a beautiful scenery. In here, you can have a slow walk to see those villages, and you can see those famous historic sites like Chengyang wind and rain bridge, and you may watch custom performances.
Chengyang Eight Villages consists of eight villages, Ma'an village, Ping village, Yan village, Dong village, Da village, Pingtan village, Pingpu and Jichang village, and the first five villages are linked together and close to each other. Pingtan village and Jichang village is comparably far in distance. The population of the Dong people in those villages is about ten thousand, and the Dong people have many festivals, and those village would be chaotic and busy, when they are in festival days. Those villages are well preserved, including their buildings, clothes, custom and culture. The tour in this attraction usually begins at Ma'an village, through Ping village, Yan village, Pingtan village, Dong village, one by one, and ends at Da village, and the walking tour may cost two to three hours.
The natural scenery of original ecology consists of waterwheel, wind and rain bridge, gulou, diaojiaolou and idyllic scenes, and cultural tour consists of food experience, and folklore performance, and museum visiting. Through the tour of this two themes, you would have a thorough experience about the Dong culture and you would have an amazing tour about the beautiful landscape. To the food experience, you may eat oil tea of the Dong in the morning, taste local snacks and have a luxurious meal at Baijiayan in Da village.
You may see the residential buildings of the Dong people, which has a general name as gulou and diaojiaolou. Those residential buildings are made from wood, and have ethnic features of the Dong. In Yan village, there is a handcraft museum of the Dong, and in here you may see many traditional handcrafts made by the Dong people. In Ping village, there are grand folklore performances of song and dance, and traditional music instrumental performance, and the performers are local Dong people. This performance would give you an experience in custom and culture of the Dong. In Pingtan village, there is a large piece of land for idyllic scenery, and it has a tour for tea plantation. In Da village, there is a place especially for having a feast in an important festival, and the meal is called Baijiayan.
In this attraction, you may see many bridges, and there are two famous bridges. Chengyang wind and rain bridge is a typical building of the Dong, and it is the best preserved and largest wind and rain bridge, and a cultural relic protected at national level. It is a bridge with a structure of wood and stone, and has five stone piers supporting the wooden bridge. The bridge is built in 1912, and has a length of 64.4 meters, a width of 3.4 meters, and a height of 10.6 meters. The wooden bridge has a roof and five pavilions, and two sides of the bridge have benches for a rest. One of the most amazing features is that its construction doesn't use a rivet, but uses tenons to joint the wooden materials. To the Dong people, Chengyang wind and rain bridge is not only a transportation tool to help people across a river, and but also a belief which would give them good luck and happiness. Helong bridge in Yan village is first built in 1814, ruined three times by floods, and renovated in 1941. The bridge is 42.8 meters long, and 3.78 meters wide, and 9 meters high. On the top of the bridge roof, there are two dragons, symbolizing their protection of the village.
