How this 800-year-old Chinese village is using the power of song

In a remote valley in southern China’s Guizhou province lies Huanggang, an 800-year-old village known for its wooden buildings. Here, the Dong people keep their unique culture alive through the power of song.

A Chinese woman in traditional dress and head piece holding a banjo-like guitar and standing in a wooden house villages in the mountains.
The Dong people still perform songs inspired by 800-year-old stories on friendship, nature and love.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
Story and photographs byAisha Nazar
Published March 3, 2026
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
A busy village street lined with simple, wooden houses and mountains in the background.
As daylight fades, Huanggang winds down, the air filled with the hum of cicadas while smoke rises from kitchen fires. In recent years, roads have been built to connect the village to the outside but, despite the changes, life moves at a slow pace.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
An elderly Chinese man with a simple fabric turban sitting on the stone steps of his house, looking intro the distance with a concerned expression.
A close-up of drying corn still in its husks, strapped to a simple wooden stick.
The community of nearly 2,000 Dong ethnic people continues to practise a traditional farming lifestyle, rising with the sun and resting at sunset.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Aisha Nazar (Bottom) (Right)
A birds-eye perspective onto a small mountain village with wooden towers peeking through the otherwise low-rising wooden houses.
Huanggang has five drum towers, each representing a family clan. Historically, a drum was placed on the top floor and beaten to signal major events or emergencies like fires. Today, the towers serve as community spaces for meetings, ceremonies and singing, keeping them at the heart of village life. They overlook clusters of wooden houses built without nails, using an ancient joinery method.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
A group of young singers sat on a half-circle bench in a dark, wooden house, wearing traditional dress and headpieces.
Inside one of the village’s drum towers, Dong women in full traditional attire gather to sing the Grand Songs, a polyphonic choral tradition central to their culture. These are ancient songs carrying tales of friendship, kindness, nature and, above all, love. In Huanggang, the women play a central role in family life and are often the custodians of the Dong’s heritage, continuing to wear traditional clothes on a daily basis and passing melodies and cultural knowledge to the young. One of the women, Ms Wu Xianliang (pictured far right), a teacher native to Huanggang, has been showing the Grand Songs to the local children since 2007, passing on the knowledge she learned from her own village elders. For them, singing isn’t a performance, but part of daily life.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar

(Watch the full performances here and here.)

A woman seen from afar, tending to a rice field on the slope of a hill.
A close-up of a couple female ducks standing on a rock as a small river flows by.
As a community largely dependent on agriculture, the village is a preserve of the traditional rice-fish-duck farming system. Rice paddies provide a habitat for fish, which help control pests, while ducks swim among the plants, eating insects and fertilising the fields.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Aisha Nazar (Bottom) (Right)
A close-up of a couple of dead fish in a simple wooden bucket in shallow water.
This system has been practised for centuries in the village, enabling the Dong people to live in harmony with the land while maintaining a food system that’s both productive and ecologically balanced.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
A group of three elderly Chinese women sitting on a wooden bench attached to a house and laughing widely.
One of the Dong’s oldest festivals, the Hantian Festival, falls on the 15th day of the sixth lunar month. Villagers congregate in their best traditional clothes to sing and shout to the sky, asking the heavens for favourable weather and a bountiful harvest.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
A narrow river snaking through wooden houses with lots of local villagers bathing and catching fish.
They spend the day in celebration, catching fish in the stream, enjoying a feast and singing as a way to strengthen their community bond.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
A crowd of young Chinese girls in traditional dress and head pieces performing a song.
Once important to all age groups, the traditions of the Grand Songs are mostly kept alive by the older generation. The elders remain the living keepers of Huanggang’s oral musical heritage, a practice at risk as younger residents drift away to seek opportunities outside the village.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar
Two kittens cuddling on a log with a basket of dried chillies next to them and the village scene behind them.
A landscape shot of rice fields in misty mountains.
Without a written language, the indigenous epic songs of the Dong people face a very real danger of disappearing. Women like Ms Wu are fighting to keep the traditions alive with Huanggang’s youth, upholding an important local saying: “Rice nourishes the body, while singing nourishes the soul.” It’s a philosophy that’s shaped the Dong people’s identity for centuries.
Photograph by Aisha Nazar (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Aisha Nazar (Bottom) (Right)
Published in the April 2026 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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