Datun chieftain's manor of the Yi Ethnic Group, located in Datun in the west of Southwest China's Guizhou Province, was built by a descendant of Yu Xiangyi, a chieftain, and was later expanded by Yu's adopted son Yu Dafu, thus becoming the current 3,000-square-meter complex measuring 50 meters in width and 60 meters in length.

The building complex is constructed along the slope of a hill in the form of three layers of terrace. On manor's axis are three five-room-wide halls. A study, a fish pond, an ancestral hall and bridges are on the left side of the axis while a garden, guest rooms, boudoirs and storehouses are on the right side. Around the complex are built brick-and-stone walls measuring more than 2 meters in height and six watchtowers measuring between 8 to 12 meters high.

Guizhou is a multi-ethnic province. Throughout history it was ruled by various levels of ethnic chieftains. Among them, chieftains of the Yi ethnic group were powerful and influential in the northwest of the province. Following the manor's designation as a key cultural heritage under the state protection in 1988, it has been renovated several times and is now in good conditions.

The manor's most distinctive feature is its tiger head patterns carved or painted on different spots, including gates, walls, pillars, beams and lintels. This is due to the Yi ethnic group being a nomadic tribe in the very beginning, with tigers formerly playing an important role in their lives.

Yi people's worship of tigers is related to their lifestyle. In fact, Yi people are descendants of an ancient nomadic tribe called Qiang, who inhabited in Northwest China's Gansu and Qinghai provinces and Southwest China's Sichuan Province. According to historians, Qiang means herdsmen in ancient dialects.

As descendants of Qiang, Yi people still retain the habit of raising goats and sheep. For instance, Weining, a Yi-inhabited county, is one of the province's important family husbandry bases. The county boasts 2.82 million mu (188,000 hectares) of grassland, making up 30 percent of the county's land, while sheep and goats account for one third of the county's total livestock.

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