The Ma'an Drum Tower in Sanjiang, Guangxi, China
This is my second time to the Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County this year. On July 25 I arrived in Sanjiang County and lodged at the Sanjiang Hotel. In the afternoon, I looked around the downtown and visited the Sanjiang Gulou (Sanjiang Drum Tower). The tower is known as the “No. 1 Drum Tower in the World”. It was built in 2002, measures 42.6m in height and has 27 levels. All the structures of the tower are wooden. It has four main poles. It is said that they were carried to Sanjiang from Guizhou Province by several hundred people. The longest one is 27m and make from a tree, which is considered 208 years old. I didn’t like this tower because it is not so natural and old-timey like those I would saw in the Dong people’s villages in the next day.
On the morning of July 26, I took a bus in the Sanjiang Xikezhan (Sanjiang West Bus Station) to the Linxi Village (40 km, about 50-minute’s drive). From there, I spent the whole day hiking to the Chengyang Village and passed many beautiful Dong villages. It wasn’t 6 pm until I registered in the Chengyang Guest House but it was not a hard going because I was attracted by patches of beautiful rice paddies, tea plantations, forests, unique drum towers and the wind and rain bridges of the Dong minority people (In my previous two articles I had made some introductions about the drum towers and the wind and rain bridges).
For more beautiful photos please visit http://www.chinafacttours.com/
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
