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Published: October 28th 2007
Our journey to Sanjiang was noteworthy due to the state of maximal overcrowdedness achieved by the bus to Longsheng, and then due to the bus from Longsheng having aircon (a local bus with aircon!!!) Sanjiang is a fairly charmless town, but at least possessed amenities we hadn't had in recent days. It's the capital of the Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, the Dong being another Chinese minority tribe. One feature of all Dong settlements is one or more drum towers, originally used as lookout points - the drums inside would be beaten to alert the villagers to some impending peril. Nowadays the space beneath them is used as a meeting place. Sanjiang possesses the largest one in the region at 47m high but apart from that there is little in the way of Dong heritage - for that, you need to head into the nearby villages.
One of the best examples of a Dong settlement is Chengyang, a half hour's bus ride from Sanjiang. It's reached by a striking wind-and-rain bridge, so-called because its design renders it cool in the summer but secure from rainfall. Apparently no nails were used in its construction. Crossing the bridge is to run the gauntlet
of a squadron of handicraft sellers, most hawking items made from the shiny indigo cloth that is a Dong speciality. The RG claims that clothes made from this material are often varnished in egg white to deter mossies, but I'm not sure of the relative merits of that versus 50% DEET.
The village itself is a collection of wooden buildings (another Dong characteristic) including several bridges and towers. The irrigation system for the nearby fields consists of rows of creaking waterwheels constantly depositing river water into a network of leaking bamboo pipes. We had a pleasant potter around but the burning heat sapped both of us of our energy, and after a couple of hours we headed back to Sanjiang.
I was worried that the heat was beginning to affect me in strange ways, especially when I had a dream that I was friends with Kanye West, so we headed for the hills again.
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Wind-and-rain bridge
Shangguan
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Pinyin photo
I just wanted to let you know that it's actually not pinyin, but the Zhuang ethnic Minority language. Since Guangxi is a Zhuang autonomous region, all legal building signage has to have the Zhuang romanized language instead of pinyin.