John and Jean: Datang Miao Mini-skirt Village -

Up early and took a walk through the garden and found this lovely.

Then tai chi and breakfast and onto the bus with packed bags for our visit to Datang Miao Village, the Mini-skirt Miao. A little history lesson from yeschinatour.com...
There is an ancient and modish Miao nationality, and it is famous for its special clothing. It was said they had been wearing the “mini-skirt” for five hundred years and they are called as “Mini-skirt Miao”. They wear the skirt only ten centimeters long, and it is made of folded indigo weaving cloth of about 8 meters. There is a colored ribbon with 16 centimeters wide and 20-25 centimeters long tied round the waist, and their feet are cloth wrapped, which have a distinctive style. Their clothing is mostly with butterfly pattern. They wear one or two skirts usually, but three or four skirts in grand festivals.
History of “mini-skirt” It was said that hundreds years ago, women wore long clothing, and it was inconvenient to work. One day, there was a woman back to home with soilage in her dress, and soon after she died from lightning strike. The Miao people thought that the dress with soilage had tarnished the ancestors, which made the God angry. So after negotiation, several elders decided to change the long clothing to short.

First greeting at village entrance with buffalo horn

filled with rice wine...

Pouring rice wine into bowls...

Second greeting with rice wine in bowl...

Lots of little ones...they'll be out there dancing soon enough!

First a dance of welcome....

then a dance for good harvest...

then an elders dance...

then the wooden stool dance to celebrate

the babies 100 day...

then the men's performance with old instruments...

then the group dance...

with the guests.

Lusheng of all shapes and sizes...traditional reed instrument...

funny...it didn't sound like that when

the other guys played it!!

Very fun performance!

The performers headed back to their day jobs and we headed into the village to visit the unusual barns built on the water. There are 40 of these storage barns built in the pools

with six wooden pillars on concrete blocks and grey tile or fir bark roofs. The barn have no nails.

They are 1.5 meters above the ground and 3 1/2- meters above the water surface.

This prevents pests from accessing the rice and also helps prevent mold and mildew. It also helps prevent fires. This type of storage area has been in this culture for over 600 years.

Back to the bus and lunch on the way to Rongjiang, our next destination. It was a fascinating ride through this agricultural area!

This was a frequent site...the boot shaped

basket in the back is to carry his scythe.

Lots of tea in this area...

as well as rice and rape seed (canola).

We talked Mei and Michael into a walk along the road so we could get pictures of all the flowers we'd been seeing for days! It was a wonderful stroll!