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Hidden in the remote valleys of southern China are 1,000-year-old villages where time seems to have stood still. These Dong minority communities consist of intricate wooden buildings, host unique festivals, and are home to people who worship nature, don elaborate outfits and favour ancient lifestyles.
Stilted homes and time-worn pagodas line the car-free streets of these villages, which are surrounded by fields that produce the wheat, rice and vegetables that feed its residents, and the tea, cotton and rapeseed they sell. Chengyang is a cluster of Dong communities in a far-flung region of Guangxi province. Courtesy Ronan O Connell
The Dong are one of 55 ethnic minorities in China, and emerged more than a