Environment
An average-sized Dong village has 200-300 homes, although the smallest ones have only 10-20 and the largest ones have more than 1,000 (Geary 2003:43). Dong villages typically have:
- Ganlan-style wooden houses (stilt houses)
- Ancient and sacred trees
- Covered ("Wind-and-rain") bridges
- Wayside pavilions with wooden or stone benches
- Bullfighting arenas, which are fields
- Wells surrounded by stone rims and usually dug near trees
- Fish-ponds, traditionally communally-owned
- Racks for drying grain and granaries
- Village entrances - to protect against intruders, and also are where "blocking the way" ceremonies are located
- Drum towers - usually found only in southern Dong areas today. Drum towers may be village towers or extended-family towers (Geary 2003:47).
- Altars to Sa Sui, the main deity of the Dong pantheon
Popular scenic spots in Dong-speaking territories are the Jiudong region, Liudong region, Chengyang village, Pingdeng region, and Yuping region.
Read more about this topic: Dong People
Famous quotes containing the word environment:
“Maturity involves being honest and true to oneself, making decisions based on a conscious internal process, assuming responsibility for one’s decisions, having healthy relationships with others and developing one’s own true gifts. It involves thinking about one’s environment and deciding what one will and won’t accept.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“White males are the most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)
“People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do—after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)