The Dong ethnic minority is distributed over the neighboring areas of Guizhou, Hunan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. The Dongs are engaged in fishery and grain production. They plant paddy rice, raise fish in paddy fields, and also produce jelly fungi, mushrooms, dries bamboo shoots and watermelons.

The Dongs usually have four meals a day: two meals and two teas. Meals mainly consist of rice. The Dongs living on plains usually eat non-glutinous rice, while those in mountains eat glutinous rice. They do not use chopsticks, but knead rice into rice rolls, which are called Tuanfan (a kind of food).

The Dongs usually prepare food for the whole day in the morning and take the food with them to the mountains. They drink oil tea, which is a kind of thick soup with tea leaves, fried rice, fried peanuts, soft soybean, glutinous rice, meat, pig viscera, salt, chopped shallot, and tea oil.

The vegetables are mostly processed into pickles in two ways: in jar or in bamboo tube. Meat mainly comes from pigs, cattle, chicken and ducks, with similar cooking ways as the Hans.

The Dongs can process ginger into various pickles, such as salted ginger, sugar ginger, shredded ginger, five-flavor ginger, oil ginger, and ginger liquor, etc., and sell them in different places.

Male adult Dongs are mostly fond of drinking. They have a very special welcoming ritual for visitors into the villages. The Dongs place barriers at the gate tower to block guests from entering the village, and drink while singing in antiphonal style, exchanging humorous lyric. After that, they remove the barriers and welcome guests home. Once seated, they drink together again. The neighbors may come to accompany the guests, or invite the guests to their home, or entertain the guests in restaurants together and share the bill.

The Dongs have several dietetic taboos. It is forbidden to dine sitting on the door brink or watching others eating; it is forbidden to make a fire on the lunar New Year's Day; no visitors are permitted into the village during ancestor worship period; sons in mourning must not eat meat dishes except fish and shrimp.