The marriage of Dong nationality is monogamous. Aunt-uncle cousin marriage is more popular, but aunt-cousin brother and sister and those of different generations can't intermarry. After marriage, women have the custom of "sitting at home" (i.e., "not leaving the husband's home"). Before the liberation, the basic social unit of the Dong people was the patriarchal family of the feudal patriarchal system. Women's status in society and in the family was lower than that of men, and women were forbidden to touch the bronze drums; men or elders were not allowed to go upstairs when they were downstairs. Only after marriage can a Dong girl enjoy the "private house" accumulated by her parents and herself, as well as a small amount of "girl's field" and "girl's land". Men inherit the family business, and if there is no heir, they can recruit a foster son.
The funeral is generally the same as the Han Chinese, the line of burial. In some areas, there is also the custom of burial, after the death of a person into the funeral coffin parked in the countryside, and so on the clan and the deceased with the same year and generation after the death, only to choose a date for burial together.
Belief in multiple gods, worship of natural objects, ancient trees, boulders, wells, bridges are objects of worship. The god of the female family name "Sasu" (meaning the first grandmother who founded the village) is the supreme god, and every village has established a "Sasu Temple". Chicken divination, grass divination, egg divination, snail divination, rice divination, and trigram divination are used to determine good and bad luck. Some places are influenced by the Han Chinese and believe in some Han Chinese gods. Believe in the immortality of the soul. Buddhism has also been circulating, there are nunneries and temples, but not many people believe. Christianity and Catholicism were also introduced, but not many people believed in them.
The festivals of the Dong nationality are more common in the Spring Festival, Cow God Sacrifice (on the eighth day of the fourth month or the sixth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar), and New Eating Festival (in the seventh month of the lunar calendar). In some areas, Dong New Year is also celebrated in October or November. Due to the interaction between ethnic groups, the Dong people also have Qingming, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Chung Yeung and other festivals.
Among them, the annual festival of the Dong people is called Xingnian. Eat social rice (February spring social day) Dong people have the custom of eating social rice, but do not engage in any activities. Fields, streams, mountain slopes on the tender artemisia (Artemisia annua, Artemisia annua) picked home, washed and chopped, rubbed all the bitter water, roasted, and wild garlic (onions), rice dishes, dried preserved beans, dried bacon and other auxiliary ingredients mixed with glutinous rice (can be mixed with part of the sticky rice, but you need to boil the sticky rice into a half-cooked and then mixed with sticky rice) steamed or simmered into a distinctive flavor to eat, and its function is to prevent the epidemic plague, to promote health.
The shrine for ancestors in the house is the most sacred place. All weapons, knives, pine, sword, halberd, go, spear, bow, crossbow, and even brown rope, are not allowed to be placed on it. Otherwise, it is a great disrespect to the god and will incur punishment. Walled village held during the ritual activities, taboo outsiders into the village. The forbidden sign is to tie four knots with spotted thatched grass, forming a cross, hanging at the entrance of the fortress.
Food Customs
The Dong people are located in the neighboring provinces of Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi in southern China. The Dong people grow rice, raise fish in the paddy fields, and fish and grain at the same time. They produce wood ear, shiitake mushroom, yucca slice, watermelon and so on.
Most of the Dong areas have four meals a day, two meals and two teas. Rice takes rice as the main body. In the flat dam, they eat more japonica rice, and in the mountainous area, they eat more glutinous rice, and there are many kinds of glutinous rice, such as red glutinous rice, black glutinous rice, white glutinous rice, bald shell glutinous rice, dry land glutinous rice and so on, among which Xianghe glutinous rice is the most famous. They will make all kinds of rice into white rice, flower rice, light porridge, flower porridge, dumplings, patties and so on. Patty cake and so on, eat without chopsticks, with the hands of the rice into a ball to eat, known as "eat tuan rice". Dong people generally used to do a good job in the early morning of the day's meals, take to the mountains to eat. Among them, the "tuan rice" made of fragrant rice is especially sweet, and it is said that "one family steams rice, and the whole village smells good". Dong people drink tea specifically refers to oil tea, it is made of tea, rice flowers, fried peanuts, crispy soybeans, glutinous rice, meat, pork, salt, scallions, tea oil, etc., a mixture of thick soup, both to quench their thirst, but also to fill their hunger. With rice, tea supporting, and vegetables, fish, meat, fruits, wild game, fungus ear and drinks, food sources broad and heterogeneous.
Most of the vegetables are made into pickles. The production of sauerkraut has altar system and tube system two kinds, altar system means that the amoy water into the altar, placed in the fireside heating, so that the fermentation, made of sour soup, and then cook fish and shrimp, vegetables with sour soup, as the most common daily dishes.
Fresh fish, including carp, crucian carp, grass carp, eels, loach, shrimp, crabs, snails, mussels and so on, can be made into fire-roasted rice carp, grass carp soup, fresh fried crucian carp, sucking prongs of snails, sour shrimp, sour crab and other flavors. Folk often eat shrimp sauce is also more altar production. Pickled fish, pickled pork chops, steaks and pickled chickens and ducks are mainly tube system. There are two kinds of barrels: wooden barrels and bamboo barrels. Production of pickled fish to the best in winter, the longer the pickling time, the more mellow its flavor. Fish and shrimp in addition to a large number of sour food, but also often eaten fresh.
Meat is mainly pork, beef, chicken and duck meat, eaten with little difference with the Han Chinese. Fruits and melons are prickly plums, kiwi, U persimmon, wild prunes, wild pears, vine pears, full of fruit, prickly chestnuts, Dawang Bubble, as well as the tender bark of the pine village, mulberry tree, tender bark, and the root of the fragrant grass, and so on.
Among them, the fruit of the oak can be made into tofu, "fragrant tree" skin can be white teeth, oil tea tree on the long "tea bubble" is a natural sweet and sour juice. Wild game includes rats, snakes, tadpoles, four-legged snakes, young cicadas, young locusts, bee pupae, stone frogs, pangolin, nui nui fish, elk, sika deer, muntjac, as well as the pine cone-grown pine-scented chickens and pine-scented pigs that can be skillfully utilized by the Dong people. In terms of fungus, there are pine mushrooms and delicious jellied chicken mushrooms, as well as vine roots and kudzu roots that can be used to make poi and vermicelli, fine moss grown in paddy fields, and bamboo shoots that can be found everywhere. The main beverages are home-made rice wine and "bitter wine", as well as tea and fruit juices.
According to a rough estimate, the Dong people's common food is not less than five hundred kinds, flying in the sky, swimming in the water, on the ground, crawling in the grass, as long as you can eat, nothing to take food. Showing their ingenuity and strong adaptability to survival. Dong family can use ginger to make a variety of sauces. It can be processed into pickled ginger, drum ginger, sugar ginger, strips of ginger, five flavors of ginger, oil ginger, ginger wine and so on sold all over the world. Xiangxi Dong girls are good at carving fish, birds, flowers and grasses into various shapes with pomelo skin, winter melon skin, etc., and impregnating them with white sugar to make preserves, and when treating guests, the small ones are used for pickling, and the big ones are used for paying guests in the plate. In the minds of the Dong family: glutinous rice is the most fragrant, sweet rice wine is the most mellow, pickled cabbage is the most delicious, leaf smoke is the most refreshing, the wine song is the best, the feast is the most joyful. The Dong people have to play "Tongba" for their feasts, which is a complex and detailed process with many varieties. For example, if you add Suzi juice, it is called red Tong Po, if you add Yang Tong leaves, it is called black Tong Po, and if you add stuffing, it is called bean paste Tong Po and jujube paste Tong Po, etc. When you make tea, you need to add tea to it. Banquet tea to add pomelo skin, melon skin carved into candied flowers; seat to be prepared for the best-selling "five flavors of ginger", fragrant and tasty "oil tea", sweet and soft "black pearl rice", buffalo modulation of the "sour dragon meat", as well as the famous "spirits of grass carp," in order to guests and hosts to get together together with the * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.
The adult men of the Dong ethnic group, generally love to drink, the alcohol is mostly home brewed rice wine, degrees are not high, light and mellow. The most distinctive feature is the special welcoming ceremony when guests enter the village - "roadblocking wine". Dong family members entering the village in the doorway set up by the "barricade", blocking the guests, drinking and singing, you sing me, the lyrics are witty and amusing, hilarious, sung and drunk, and then remove the obstacles to welcome the guests into the door. After being seated and wine "cross cups", neighbors or automatically come to accompany the guests, or guests to their homes, or "get together" in the drum tower *** with the feast, not divided into two. At the banquet, there are also rules such as "offering chicken head to guests", "treating guests with oil tea", "treating guests with pickled vegetables and bitter wine", "eating together", "drinking revolving wine" and so on.
The dietary taboos of the Dong ethnic group are mainly as follows: not to sit on the doorway to eat, not to watch others eating; not to make fire on the first day of the first month; not to allow outsiders to enter the village during the period of sacrifice; not to avoid meat and vegetarian food for the filial son during the period of mourning but not to limit the fish and shrimp, and so on.
The Dong nationality worships the dragon, and when a rainbow appears in the sky, it is called "the dragon drinks water", and no one can pick water or finger the rainbow. They also worship fish, and when they identify themselves with their family or recognize their relatives, they first ask each other whether they know the three fish***heads (the totem symbols of their forefathers), and if they can answer them, they will be regarded as people of the same family. Whenever there is a big event such as wedding, funeral, marriage, etc., fish are indispensable for treating and sending gifts.
The adult men of the Dong nationality generally like to drink wine, and most of the wine they drink is home-brewed rice wine, which has a low degree and is light and mellow.
Common Habits
The diet of Dong people takes rice as the main food, with round-grained polished rice as the main food in Pingba area, and glutinous rice as the main food in mountainous areas. They are generally fond of chili peppers and sour flavors. Self-processed "grains of fish", "grains of meat", storage for more than ten years. Using oil tea to treat guests is a kind of hospitality habit of the Dong people. The villages of the Dong ethnic group are situated on the mountains and surrounded by water, which is the most characteristic of the southern part of the country. There are ancient trees at the end of the village, "wind and rain bridges" across the streams, and fish ponds in the villages. According to the clan name of the settlement, the drum tower towers towering between them. Live in the "dry bar" room, upstairs people, downstairs livestock and stacking debris. Most areas have three meals a day, and some places have four meals a day, that is, two teas and two meals. The two teas refer to the oil tea unique to the Dong folk. Oil tea is tea, flowers, fried peanuts (or crispy soybeans), glutinous rice, meat or pork, salt, scallions and other raw materials (some places also add spinach and bamboo artemisia), made of soup-like food, both to quench their thirst, but also hunger, it is often referred to as "eating oil tea".
Folk often eat shrimp paste is also more altar production. Pickled fish, pickled pork chops, steak and pickled chicken and duck are mainly tube system. The two types of barrels are wooden barrels and bamboo barrels. Production of pickled fish to the best in winter, the longer the pickling time, the more mellow its flavor. Fish and shrimp in addition to a large number of sour food, but also often eaten fresh. Adult men of the Dong ethnic minority, generally love to drink wine, most of the alcohol consumed is home brewed rice wine, degree is not high, light and mellow.