Looking for the ancient stage of Dong Village in Guangxi

In the memory of the ancient stage in Guangxi, there is a unique stage, which is the "stage tower" integrated with the drum tower located in Linlue Village, Dutong Township, Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County. Among the ancient stages where Han culture plays the leading role, this Dong village stage is like a clever and wonderful flower, exuding unique charm among the group of ancient Chinese stages. However, a fire in 2009 "ransacked" this beautiful village and reduced the "stage building" to ashes. Comparably, there is an ancient stage with gantry columns located in Heli Village, Liangkou Township, this county.

The warm sunshine of late autumn shines on the rice fields in Dong Township, "painting" the rice fields with a layer of golden color. Walking on the field ridge nestled by the stream, you will see a simple "Three Kings Palace" temple and the wind and rain bridge-style "Hehe Bridge" when you look up. It is said that this is a temple built by the Dong people to commemorate the three princes of the Yelang Kingdom. It was built during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. The stage is an ancillary building and adopts the Dong people's structure of buckets and gantry structures. Every year on the fifth day of the second lunar month, there is a temple fair here. On this day, Dong opera was sung on the stage.

After crossing the stream and climbing up the steep and narrow stone steps, I saw a Dong opera program written on a piece of red paper beside the temple door. Entering the temple gate, there are three shrines and temples on the slow and wide stone steps in front. The stage is on the "head" of the temple gate, and behind the stage is the temple gate. To enter the temple gate, you have to pass under the stage. The exquisite and exquisite stage with cornices and corners faces the shrine. The most distinctive thing is the Dong people’s corridors with wooden balconies on both sides of the stage.

What are these two corridors used for? "We're here to watch a show!" An old man walked out from the corridor. The old man's name is Qin Enxiong. He is over seventy years old and specializes in looking after temples. He is a villager in Heli Village. From watching operas to singing operas and then guarding the stage, his life is like a play.

In his memory, this stage has always been very lively. When I was a child, people in the village had no roads to watch the opera, only narrow fields. The temple was not spacious, so in order to grab a seat to watch the show, he followed his friends into the fields early in the morning. When the play was over and everyone dispersed, they discovered that there was an extra road on the ridge of the field.

"When it comes to the opera, the steps and the corridors on both sides are full of people. It's so lively!" Speaking of the scene of watching the opera, Uncle Qin became excited. What impressed him most deeply was his experience in singing and opera during "extraordinary times". It was the 1960s and 1970s, and the temple, which could only accommodate a few hundred people, became a "small society" with credit unions, grain stations, and shops concentrated here. Because of this, the temple and the stage were preserved, but the costumes faced doom. Without costumes, Dong opera would be useless. The singer had an idea and hid the costume. Where to hide it? granary! The trick is wrapped in straw and placed with the grain. Later, when they were singing, the costumes were not cleaned yet, so the actors came on stage wearing costumes with grains on them, as if they had rolled on the threshing floor.

Through the exquisite stage and quaint corridor, you can overlook the harvest fields, look up at the sky and the distant mountains. On the stage, a woodcut ancient couplet and a red paper couplet complement each other. The ancient couplet can be vaguely seen: "For generals and prime ministers to behave for princes and princes, to persuade the world to do meritorious deeds; to be loyal and good, and to be traitorous, the voice and smile make it clear who is right and wrong at that time." Today's couplet clearly reads: "Everyone sees the show, everyone sees it. Everyone looks at people, true, false, true, true, true and false. The uncle said the pronunciation of "three three four three", which is really interesting: everyone sees it, everyone sees it, everyone sees it, everyone sees it; true and false, false and true, true and false, true and false.

"This kind of dry-railed stage is rare, and now it is mostly a drum tower stage. Well, there are three drum towers in Heli Village, two of which have stages!" Following Uncle Qin's line of sight, I walked into the distance. The Dong village. From a distance, the three drum towers look like watchers in the fields. Along the way, Dong people dressed in black and wearing bandanas worked in the fields.

The Drum Tower is known as the "brave of the village" of Dong Village. The number of drum towers means the number of surnames in the village. Most of the ancient stages were temple stages and ancestral hall stages. The Drum Tower Stage is probably a type of ancestral hall stage.

The Yang's Drum Tower at the edge of the village is a drum tower that integrates a stage. The drum tower stands on the edge of the field, in the shape of a seven-eaves and octagonal pagoda. The stage is in the drum tower, and the simplicity is shining. An old man walked by the playground in front of the Drum Tower on crutches, and I started chatting with him. It turns out that the Drum Tower was built by the Yang family five years ago to facilitate the clan members to watch Dong opera during their leisure time. Another drum tower stage in the village was also built at the same time. When the opera comes, the village is so lively!

Generally, drum towers are built in the center of the village. Why is Yang's Drum Tower built on the edge of the village? "In order to prevent fire, it is also convenient to hear Dong opera in the fields."

Uncle Yang told me that the mountain on which the village is built is called Swan Ridge, and the "Swan" can be seen from the Drum Tower Theater in all directions. Looking at the fire prevention slogans that can be seen everywhere in the village, I thought that the Dong village where the "swan" was watching no longer had smoke and dust, but a beautiful sea of ??clouds accompanied by Dong opera...