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:
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“White males are the most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)