Place: Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region

After my visit to the beautiful Longji rice terraces it was time for my next stop. I woke up early that morning in Dazhai village, said goodbye to the friendly hosts, and took three buses until I ended up in Sanjiang three hours later, where I was quickly noticed by a motorcycle taxi driver. He asked me where I wanted to go to and I asked him how much I would need to spend. In the end I paid him around 150 yuan, I probably could have haggled the price down a bit, but this allowed me to take my time and having the taxi driver waiting for me as I was visiting the village. It was a very pleasant 45-minute ride, during which I could enjoy the view and nice breeze after three hours in cramped buses. Chengyang consists of eight hamlets, all belonging to the Dong minority people.

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). The Yongji wind-and-rain bridge (永济桥) is one of the most famous and picturesque structures and was built in 1912 and is 65 metres long. Wind-and-rain bridges not only facilitate transportation, but also provides shelter from the rain and serves as a community space for commercial and social activity.

Sources: <a href="https://books.google.nl/books?id=oFUWDAAAQBAJ" rel="noreferrer nofollow">books.google.nl/books?id=oFUWDAAAQBAJ</a> <a href="https://travelcathay.com/2014/01/13/wind-and-rain-bridges-of-china/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">travelcathay.com/2014/01/13/wind-and-rain-bridges-of-china/</a>