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The Dong people are renowned for their folk drama. Their literary is abundant with narrative poems, pipa songs and epics.

A men named Wu Wencai wrote and performed the first Dong operatic play, "Mei Liangyu", about 150 years ago. Accompanied by lyric pipa songs, this play marked the formation of a Dong tradition that is still being carried out today.

Stories of Dong plays come from both Han and Dong narrative poems. Some are historical plays, such as "Wu Mian", a hero from the Ming Dynasty who led 200,000 Dong and Miao people in a series of uprisings covering a period of eight years. In the play, Wu Mian takes on mythical properties.

Although drawn from Han theatrics, Dong drama has its own unique characteristics, such as the inclusion of a clown, a figure often depicted to delight and amuse the audience.

The clowns wear black masks or paint white lines on their faces and noses. Some paint a frog on their noses or the Chinese character symbolizing "good luck" and "good harvest".

Almost every village has amateur opera troupes, who are often invited to perform in neighboring villages, towns and cities where they are warmly received by young and old. They are greeted with good-hearted jests and songs of greeting by villagers and townfolk who block their way by putting obstacles in their entry path. The villagers allow them to pass only after the actors reply in song.

Evidence of a flourishing textile tradition is apparent most everywhere in southern Dong areas. Time-honored traditions of weaving, spinning and dyeing continue to thrive. Long narrow strips of indigo-dyed cloth dry on stony river banks or flat grass fields after soaking the fabric in wooden tubs of pig's blood. Mothers walking to market carry their children in finely embroidered or woven baby carriers of harmonious design. Yards of handwoven fabric, hung out and shimmering brilliantly after a long dyeing process, billow from a two-story porch of a Dong home. The reverberating sound of dyed cloth being patiently beaten on flat stones by the women becomes everyday "music" drifting through southern Dong villages.

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