File:Gaozeng.jpg

English: Place: Gaozeng, Congjiang County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province

I was still staying in the touristic village of Zhaoxing when I went off to Gaozeng, as I wanted to have a more authentic Dong experience.

The Dong (also known as Kam) people are one of 56 recognized ethnic groups of China. Most Dong people (in total around 3,000,000) live in eastern Guizhou, western Hunan and northern Guangxi in China. Sadly, due to urbanization and assimilation into mainstream Chinese society, their culture is slowly evaporating, a fate similar to many ethnic minorities. Dong villages can be recognized by drum towers (鼓楼), wooden stilt houses and wind-and-rain bridges (风雨桥).

As I was accustomed I took a taxi, this time an uncomfortable Wuling Hongguang as the shock absorbers were seemingly broken, and I paid a little bit more as per usual so that the taxi driver would wait for me while I could take a look in town for one hour. Anyway, Gaozeng was a very different experience compared to beautiful yet overly touristic and spoiled Zhaoxing. Don't expect an overload of KTV bars and hostels, wide boulevards and 'authentic' cultural performances, but a genuine Dong town. Poor, yet full of charming traditional wooden houses, drum towers and brick houses in between, a place where you get a glimpse of daily rural life.