Deng people balance tradition in modern world

Kong Yang, an elderly Deng villager, with her granddaughter Xiao Mei at Shaqiong village. [Photo by Kuang Linhua / China Daily]

Historic housing

Though most Deng people have built modern houses, a traditional residence is kept for show in Shaqiong village.

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The two-story wooden house with a thatched roof is lifted on stilts covered with vines. The upper floor is for people, while the ground is for livestock.

It is structured like the sleeper carriages of a train. The gate facing the east is reserved for men in the family, whose hunting weapons are hung on the door. The hallway ends at the western wall, where another door is opened for women.

The hallway connects many windowless cells, which are living rooms and bedrooms. The eastern-most room is for the family's master, while the rest are distributed to each of his wives-Deng people followed polygamy traditions.

The house is structured so it can be extended westward when the man gets more wives, says Alusung, who had seven wives and 25 children. He later divorced six of them as monogamy gradually became the accepted norm among Deng people.

Ox skulls are often hung on the wall of the living rooms. Each room will have a stone fireplace and a simple bed, as the wives live and work separately.

Unlike their Tibetan neighbors who eat tsampa, a roasted barley, and butter tea as their staple fare, Deng people usually eat rice and the local "chicken's claw" grain.

A rice dish eaten with fingers is the traditional meal eaten at festivals or offered to guests.

The dish is made of locally produced rice, and chicken slices or other meat stewed with ingredients such as ginger and scallion. People use their hands to crush the rice into balls and eat together with the chicken, which is prepared in a very special way and has a unique taste when combined with the rice.

Both Deng men and women have an affinity for tobacco and wine.

Men usually smoke cigarettes, while women often smoke home-grown tobacco leaves in their smoking pipes, which they almost always have in their mouths.

They favor a special low alcoholic drink, which is made of the "chicken's claw" grain, and is offered to guests.