Nestled in a lush valley and surrounded by rice terraces, Zhaoxing Village in Liping County is a great place to explore on foot. It''s a largely unexplored region almost half covered by forest with towering mountains, gigantic waterfalls, and thousands of clear, winding rivers. In this isolated valley village the Dong people all have the same surname - Lu.

The village is divided into five parts according to family groups. Each part has a wind-and-rain bridge and a drum tower - unlike any other Dong village. The drum tower cluster is the largest and best preserved in China. Each individual drum tower represents one group of local people. It's said that the village head divided the people into five groups to make administration easier. The five towers represent kindness, righteousness, politeness, intellect and creditworthiness.

The tallest drum tower in Zhaoxing is 25m high and was made without nails or rivets. Wooden tongue and groove joints connect the tower. Inside the tower are carved figures of people, animals, and colorful flowers and an amazing 10-m-long wooden "dragon bench".

Just as there are five towers, there are five wind-and-rain bridges in Zhaoxing. In fact, these bridges are like buildings across the river, because most of them are covered with pavilions . The bridges are called "flower bridges" because of the exquisite sculptures that cover them. On a rainy day, sitting in a bridge pavilion chatting with friends is a very pleasurable experience.

On both sides of the bridges, you can see the houses of local people called diaojiao lou (houses built along the river). The diaojiao lou in Zhaoxing feature a public passage on the ground floor connecting houses. Using these passages and the five bridges, people can walk from one end of the village to the other without ever being exposed to the elements on a rainy day.

If hiking is not your thing, Zhaoxing is a great place to simply sit and watch the world go by. There are always people coming and going, farmers heading out to the fields with their water buffalo, people driving horse-driven carts along the streets, grandmothers playing with their grandchildren on the wind-and-rain bridges, and old men playing dominoes or Chinese chess in the shade of the drum towers.

 Diping Wind-and-Rain Bridge

All rights reserved. Reproduction of text for non-commercial purposes is permitted provided that both the source and author are acknowledged and a notifying email is sent to us.