The Five Drum Towers

Five drum towers rise above the rooflines of Zhaoxing, each belonging to a different clan and each marking the social territory of that clan's quarter of the village. The towers are octagonal timber structures, multistoried, with each tier slightly smaller than the one below and a pointed roof at the top — an architectural form unique to the Dong people that appears across the border areas of Guizhou, Hunan, and Guangxi.

The towers are functional as well as symbolic. The base of each tower contains a fireplace around which the clan traditionally gathered for meetings, decision-making, and winter socialising. Old men still play cards at the base of the towers in winter; the fires are lit on cold evenings. At night, lanterns inside the towers illuminate the wooden lattice from within, and the five glowing structures reflected in the streams running through the village are the image that defines Zhaoxing for most people who stay overnight. The towers are accessible freely; there is no fee for entering any of them.

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A story
The drum towers of Zhaoxing are built using a mortise-and-tenon joinery technique that uses no nails, no bolts, and no metal fasteners of any kind. The structure is held together entirely by the geometry of interlocking wood — a technique that requires the carpenter to understand the behaviour of the entire structure before cutting the first joint. The tallest of Zhaoxing's five towers has eleven tiers and stands about 20 metres high. It was built without plans in the modern sense: the specifications existed in the knowledge of the master carpenter who led the construction, transmitted through apprenticeship.