Zhaoxing Dong Grand Song Festival

In Zhaoxing, the largest Dong settlement in Guizhou and home to more than 1,100 households, nightly performances of the Grand Song, a UNESCO-recognized polyphonic tradition sung without a conductor, take place in the village's open-air theatre, alongside a dedicated late-autumn Dong Song Festival marking the harvest.

Singing in layered harmony without a conductor, a technique long assumed in Western musicology to require written notation or formal direction, is the defining feature of the Grand Song of the Dong people, performed nightly in Zhaoxing, the largest Dong settlement in Guizhou province and known locally as the 'First Village of Dong Culture.' The village itself, home to more than 1,100 households and 6,000 residents spread across drum-tower neighbourhoods, stages performances of the polyphonic Grand Song in its open-air village theatre every evening, drawing an estimated 100,000 visitors annually to hear a tradition recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.