标签： Asia

For nearly six centuries, the Indigenous Dong people of China have called the remote mountain ranges of southwestern China home. Without a formal written language, their centuries-old cultural knowledge has been passed down exclusively through oral tradition, leaving much of their unique way of life largely underexplored and unknown to broader global society. Now, an ambitious academic-led research initiative is pulling back the curtain on this little-understood marginalized community by systematically documenting their one-of-a-kind built environment, unlocking new insights into their social structure, spiritual beliefs and longstanding traditions.

Today, an estimated 3 million Dong people reside across the mountainous provinces of Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The group is already recognized globally for its polyphonic choral singing, which was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. While their unique approach to terraced agriculture, handcrafted architecture and harmonious integration of settlements with natural landscapes are equally distinctive, these cultural treasures have never been systematically digitally recorded, remaining largely invisible to outside researchers and conservationists.

Typically tucked away in dense fir forests, with direct access to waterways at valley bottoms or mid-hill slopes, Dong settlements follow a deliberate, community-focused layout. Most villages house between 200 and 500 households, with an average of four to five people per family. Every settlement is marked by a formal gatehouse that clearly defines its territorial boundaries relative to neighboring communities. Most are also home to a signature wind-and-rain bridge: a multi-purpose structure that blends the function of a village entrance and a covered bridge, serving as a gathering space for communal events and traditional blocking ceremonies. Scattered across the village landscape are hand-dug ponds, traditional wells, and raised granaries that support daily community life.

At the core of every Dong village, surrounded by two- to three-story wooden family homes, stand two central structures that anchor the community’s spiritual and social life: the iconic drum tower and the sacred Sa-Sui shrine. The drum tower embodies the Dong people’s deeply held spiritual connection between clan kinship and the fir trees that sustain their mountain homes, while the Sa-Sui shrine serves as the central site for worship of “Sa”, the grandmother deity central to Dong religious tradition. For security, social cohesion and spiritual identity, these two structures are the most significant buildings in any Dong village.

Despite their centuries of resilience, the Dong people’s unique built and cultural heritage now faces growing, existential threats from a combination of overlapping forces: accelerating climate change, unplanned modern development, expanding infrastructure, and the rapid growth of mass rural tourism. A warming global climate has increased the frequency of destructive wildfires and severe mountain flooding that ravage traditional wooden structures. As urban development encroaches on remote Dong territories, it brings improvements to quality of life but also introduces new fire risks via substandard electrical infrastructure retrofitted into historic wooden buildings.

In recent years, the expansion of transportation networks including roads, railways and new bridges, paired with unregulated tourism growth, has pushed many traditional villages toward becoming superficial decorative stage sets for visitors. While tourism generates new local income, it erodes the authentic relationship between Dong architecture, the surrounding landscape and the community’s traditional way of life. Making matters worse, the remote mountain location of most Dong villages has left local communities and regional authorities with extremely limited financial and institutional resources to address threats. Existing conservation policies and frameworks are underdeveloped, meaning repair, restoration and sustainable regeneration projects have lagged far behind the pace of destruction.

As China has undergone rapid urbanization over the past four decades, contemporary housing built with modern industrial materials and non-traditional designs has increasingly replaced historic wooden structures, irreversibly altering the visual identity and cultural meaning of traditional Dong settlements. The impact of poorly planned development can be seen at Ju Dong Village, where new infrastructure has permanently altered the historic setting surrounding the village’s ancient drum tower. Even purpose-built tourist attractions misrepresent Dong heritage: at Guizhou’s Danzhai Wanda Village, a new tourism development near Kaili, five newly constructed “iconic” drum towers are presented as standalone tourist monuments, stripped of their original contextual connection to surrounding homes, forests and community life that gives the structures their cultural meaning.

It is this urgent need to document and protect authentic Dong heritage that gave rise to the groundbreaking *Decoding Dong* project. Launched in 2023 and completed in 2025, the interdisciplinary initiative brought together experts from architecture, anthropology, heritage science, sociology and digital humanities to create the first systematic digital record of the Dong people’s physical and cultural heritage.

The project employed a suite of cutting-edge, complementary research methods, including 3D LiDAR scanning, aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry, 3D reality capture modeling, precise measured drawing, documentary filmmaking, and detailed geographic mapping. These technical tools were paired with oral history interviews collected directly from Dong community members, centering Indigenous knowledge in the documentation process. To date, the project has completed the first-of-its-kind digital archive of Dong architectural heritage, creating detailed digital and audio-visual records of approximately 100 historic buildings across a dozen remote Dong villages. Throughout the research process, the team prioritized consultation with key community stakeholders, including clan leaders, elderly villagers and regional cultural policymakers, to ensure the work aligned with community needs and priorities.

While Dong Indigenous heritage remains under significant threat, constrained by limited resources for local governments and communities, the *Decoding Dong* project marks a critical step forward for conservation efforts. By building a publicly accessible, community-centered archive of cultural information supported by modern digital technology, the project team aims to raise global awareness of the Dong people’s unique cultural legacy without compromising the traditions and identity that make the community distinct.

China’s top legislative body is reviewing a damning annual audit that reveals widespread mismanagement, fraud, and embezzlement of billions of yuan in public welfare funds, prompting government authorities to launch targeted corrective actions to safeguard public livelihoods.

Presented by Auditor-General Hou Kai to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Tuesday, the 2025 fiscal audit evaluated the central government’s budget implementation and nationwide fiscal governance. Beyond its broad assessment of public spending, the report flagged severe irregularities across multiple high-priority social sectors, including childcare, compulsory education, employment support, public healthcare, elderly care services, affordable housing, and disability assistance. The most substantial problems were uncovered in two core social safety net programs: work-related injury insurance and maternity support funds.

Auditors traced nearly 4.87 billion yuan (equivalent to approximately $715.8 million) in problematic funds within the injury insurance system. The investigation found that roughly 3.97 million workers employed in high-risk industries either had no injury coverage at all or were enrolled under illegally reduced coverage standards that left them underprotected. As of the end of September 2025, a cross-provincial review of construction sites found that 34,100 active projects across 24 provinces had failed to provide injury insurance for 2.26 million migrant workers, resulting in 2.53 billion yuan in unpaid mandatory insurance premiums.

In addition to systemic undercoverage, auditors uncovered deliberate fraud dating back to 2013: across 22 provinces, 580 injured workers and collaborating employers had fraudulently claimed 48.13 million yuan in compensation by submitting fabricated workplace accident reports and falsified medical treatment records.

Maternity insurance and related subsidy programs also faced widespread irregularities totaling 1.08 billion yuan, with violations directly undermining the benefit rights of more than 1 million eligible people. In one common scenario, gaps in policy enforcement and calculation errors for maternity leave entitlements left 21,000 individuals across 21 provinces unable to access a total of 103 million yuan in rightfully owed benefits. In another disturbing pattern of abuse, 496 employers in 13 provinces intercepted 30.05 million yuan in maternity benefits that were intended for 3,511 of their female workers, diverting public funds designated for employee support to corporate use.

In an official statement released Wednesday, the National Audit Office noted that these widespread irregularities have directly eroded public trust in social welfare programs and diminished the tangible benefits that citizens are supposed to receive from government social policy. The office called for expanded, consistent audit oversight across all public spending sectors that impact people’s daily lives, with a specific priority placed on strengthening oversight of grassroots-level welfare distribution.

The audit’s scope extended beyond social welfare to examine public fund allocation in agriculture, finance, and natural resource conservation projects, uncovering additional cases of misuse and mismanagement. In one high-profile environmental project, a wetland protection initiative falsely claimed to have completed all required resident relocations for the protected area. In reality, fewer than 30% of the 27,000 planned relocations had been finished, with only 7,700 people moved, while persistent garbage and sewage contamination continued to threaten the wetland ecosystem.

In another case of public fund waste, 135 agricultural technology promotion projects spread across 92 counties, funded with a total of 516 million yuan in public investment, were either diverted to non-compliant uses such as corporate exhibitions and entertainment events or left completely idle with no tangible impact on local agricultural development.

Moving forward, the National Audit Office has committed to ramping up follow-up inspections and ongoing oversight to ensure all identified irregularities are fully resolved. A full public update on the progress of rectification and corrective actions is scheduled for release before the end of 2026.

A shocking case of modern-day slavery has been uncovered in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where law enforcement officials have rescued 12 men who were held captive and forced into unpaid bonded labor at a small disposable plate manufacturing facility. The horrific ordeal of these workers, which included months of systematic abuse, starvation, and violence, has reignited fierce national debate over India’s persistent failure to eliminate a practice outlawed half a century ago.

According to Uttar Pradesh Police, the case emerged after authorities received an anonymous tip-off last week reporting captive workers at the factory located in Muzaffarnagar district. Senior police officer Sanjai Kumar told reporters that investigators deployed an undercover decoy to confirm the allegations before launching a coordinated raid on the facility on Monday, alongside officials from the state labor department and district administration.

Investigations reveal the factory operators targeted vulnerable job seekers at crowded public hubs such as railway stations, luring them with false promises of steady work, free meals, and safe accommodation. Once the workers arrived at the site, their personal communication devices were immediately seized, their official identity documents were destroyed, and they were locked inside the factory premises to prevent escape. For months, and in some cases nearly two years, the men were forced to work around the clock without pay, surviving on just one meager meal of dry flatbread or bran bread a day, with pit bull terriers deployed to guard them against escape attempts. Any attempt to demand owed wages or request to leave was met with brutal violence: multiple rescued workers showed visible injury marks across their bodies from repeated beatings with sharp wooden sticks.

Twelve men were freed in the raid, with origins across four Indian states — Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, and Uttarakhand — plus one worker from Nepal. One worker from Nepal, Dan Bahadur Thapa, told reporters he had been held captive for almost two full years with no contact whatsoever with his family back home. Narayan, a worker from Chhattisgarh who took the job to support his two young children and brothers, said he had missed his family desperately during his four months of captivity. Ramu, from Uttarakhand, described the workers being “kept like prisoners,” with their Aadhaar national identity cards burned to cut off any outside connection.

Kumar, the senior police official, described the conditions workers were held in as marked by “tremendous atrocity,” adding that the scale of injury on the men’s bodies was “shocking.” To date, two suspects have been taken into custody in connection with the case, while the factory’s owner remains at large as a manhunt continues. Authorities have opened a formal case under India’s Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, alongside other relevant statutes, and have assembled a special investigation team to fully probe the operation. Police are also examining alarming allegations that multiple workers may have died at the factory during the period of captive operation.

The news of the rescue and the graphic accounts of abuse have sparked widespread outrage across India, with intense condemnation pouring in on social media and from political leaders. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi condemned the incident as a direct attack on human dignity, writing on social platform X that “Victims must receive justice along with rehabilitation and the perpetrators the harshest possible punishment.” Social media users have expressed shock that such systematic abuse could persist decades after bonded labor was criminalized, with many describing the incident as “inhumane” and “a stain on our collective conscience” that demands swift, exemplary justice.

As of the latest update, all 12 rescued workers have received urgent medical treatment for their injuries and are currently undergoing psychiatric counseling to help them process their traumatic ordeal. Eight of the 12 have already been reunited with their families, according to police, while authorities work to locate the remaining workers’ next of kin and coordinate with state agencies to arrange long-term rehabilitation support for all victims.

The case has once again drawn unwanted attention to the ongoing problem of bonded labor across India. Though the practice was formally abolished by federal law 50 years ago, it remains endemic in many low-wage, informal sectors of the economy, where impoverished and marginalized workers are often trapped through debt bondage, coercion, and systemic threats, with weak enforcement allowing abusers to operate with impunity in many regions.

In the bustling coastal metropolis of Karachi, Pakistan, a remarkable interfaith tradition unfolds each year during the Islamic holy month of Muharram. For Raju Rathore, a lifelong Karachi resident whose parents resettled from India’s Gujarat region following the 1947 Partition of India, his Hindu faith and deep devotion to Imam Hussein coexist seamlessly, a legacy passed down through three generations of his family.

Muharram, and particularly the 10th day known as Ashoura, is most widely recognized as a sacred period of mourning for Shiite Muslims, who mark the 7th-century martyrdom of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala, in what is now modern-day Iraq. Hussein’s death stands as the foundational event that split Islam into the Sunni and Shiite branches, and millions of believers across the globe commemorate the tragedy each year. Yet across South Asia, a little-known cross-cultural practice has endured for centuries: participation by Hindu communities in Muharram rituals.

For Rathore, this devotion traces back to a promise his mother made decades ago. After years of struggling to conceive, she prayed at the shrine of Masoom Shah Bukhari, vowing that if she were blessed with a child, her offspring would honor Hussein’s martyrdom by crafting tazias — intricate, temporary replicas of Hussein’s mausoleum that are carried in large public processions during Muharram. Today, at 52 years old, Rathore has carried on that vow for 45 years, handcrafting detailed tazias from paper, cardboard, glass and other materials at his own expense. His family collects materials throughout the year in preparation for Ashoura, and now his own son has stepped in to learn the craft, ensuring the tradition will outlive him. “This is our passion,” Rathore explained. “Our devotion to Imam Hussein is such that even giving our lives would feel insufficient. As long as I have the strength to continue, I will keep making them.”

Historical records confirm that cross-communal participation in Muharram has deep roots across South Asia, with groups such as the Hussaini Brahmins developing layered religious traditions that blend Hindu and Shiite Islamic practices. Justin Jones, a religious studies professor at the University of Oxford, notes that one key driving force behind this widespread participation was the political history of the region. For centuries, many ruling dynasties across South Asia were Shiite, and these ruling houses publicly sponsored Muharram processions and commemorative events, transforming what began as a sect-specific religious observance into a large, inclusive public gathering that attracted participants from all faith backgrounds.

Over generations, these observances became woven into the civic and cultural fabric of many South Asian communities. Some Hindu communities contributed as musicians in processions, while others like Rathore’s family took on the role of crafting tazias. While Jones notes that these shared interfaith traditions have become less common over the past century, as religious communities have increasingly separated their ritual practices, the custom holds strong in pockets of the region, including Karachi.

Pakistan’s 2023 national census counts nearly 3.9 million Hindu residents, making Hinduism the country’s largest religious minority. While rights groups such as Minority Rights Group have documented widespread violations of religious freedom for Pakistani Hindus, Rathore says he has never faced barriers to continuing his family’s tradition. “Yes, I am Hindu, but this is not about religion,” he said. “Many of my fellow Hindus also hold Imam Hussein in great respect.”

Rathore and other Hindu participants in Karachi gather at Shiite congregation halls during Muharram, where they join in prayers and traditional mourning rituals including chest-beating before joining the public processions. Bharat Kumar, another Karachi-based Hindu who carries on the tazia crafting tradition, echoed that interfaith respect is a core part of his community’s values. “Our religion has never taught us that because we are Hindus we should not participate in or respect others’ traditions,” Kumar said. “We celebrate our own festivals with great enthusiasm and grandeur and we approach this in the same way.”

As religious divisions have sharpened across much of South Asia in recent decades, this quiet, centuries-old practice of cross-faith solidarity and shared ritual stands as a rare example of intercommunal harmony, preserved by families like the Rathores who see their participation not as a compromise of faith, but as a sacred vow and a deeply held cultural passion.