Zhaoxing Dong Village Sunset

Five towers in one valley

Zhaoxing is the largest Dong village in China — a single valley floor in southeast Guizhou filled end to end with wooden houses, black-tiled and weathered, grouped around five drum towers, one for each clan. Behind the houses the valley walls climb in terraced fields, and a small river runs straight down the middle under roofed wind-and-rain bridges. It is a working village, not a museum piece: people dry their grain on racks, the towers fill with elders in the evening, and the smell of woodsmoke sits over everything.

The photograph that brings people here is the evening one. From the terraces above town the whole village fits in one frame — the river's line, the five towers rising above the roofs, the fields climbing the valley sides. At sunset the west-facing wood and tiles go honey-coloured, and the smoke from dinner fires drifts across the frame. Then, as the light goes, the towers and the bridges are lit, and for twenty minutes the village glows in its dark valley. The next morning, if the air is still, mist lies in the valley and you get the quiet version of the same view.