EMPOWERMENT IN THE PRACTICE OF MAKING AND INHABITING - DONG ARCHITECTURE IN CULTURAL RECONSTRUCTION

The Dong is one of the 55 officially recognized ethnic groups in China . Although its history can be traced back thousands of years, Dong cul ture is essentially non-textualized. It takes forms in 'images', such as music, performance, textiles, social customs, rituals and, most imp ortantly, architecture. In the practice of making and inhabiting their architecture, such as 'wind-and-rain bridges' and 'drum towers', the Dong have been able to strategically and inventively react to the hist orical and political constructions, particularly in the mode of textua lization and colonization, form the Han Chinese and other ethnic group s and to survive and enhance their cultural ethnicity in the process o f cultural reconstruction.