Yao of the Southern Mountains and Their Taoism of the Ordained

Scattered across the mountains of southern China, from Guangxi and Hunan to Yunnan, live the Yao, one of the larger of the country’s ethnic minorities and one of the most distinctive. A people of the high forested slopes, broken into many branches with their own dress and even their own languages, they are famous for the long hair of their women, the intricate embroidery of their clothing, and a devotion to Taoism that they made wholly their own.

This account follows the Yao from their origins among the ancient peoples of the Chinese south, through their scattering across the mountains and their legend of the divine ancestor Panhu, into their clans, their remarkable Taoist faith, and the crafts, foods, and festivals that mark them. It ends with the Yao of today, a mountain people keeping an ancient and singular way among the many peoples of modern China.

Mountain Farmers of the Southern Uplands
Mien, Yao, and the Names of a Scattered People
The Tongues of the Yao and Their Many Branches
The Hills of Guangxi, Hunan, and the South
The Charter of Emperor Ping and the Roving Fields
The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Yao
Taoism, the Ancestors, and the Ordination of Men
Long Hair, Embroidery, and the Ways of the Yao
Weavers, Embroiderers, and the Healers of the Mountains
Rice, the Terrace, and the Table of the Uplands
The Danu, the Harvest, and the Feasts of the Year
From the Southern Hills to the People of Modern China
The Yao in Modern China

Mountain Farmers of the Southern Uplands

Scattered across the mountains of southern China, from the hills of Guangxi and Hunan to the highlands of Guangdong, Guizhou, and Yunnan, live the Yao, one of the larger of the many peoples that China gathers under the name of its ethnic minorities. Numbering some three million within the country, they are a mountain people, farmers of the steep uplands who for centuries kept to the high, forested country above the valleys held by the Han.

The Yao are not a single tightly knit nation but a broad family of related groups, bound by a common origin and a shared sense of themselves yet divided into many branches with their own names, dress, and even languages. The Chinese state gathered these branches together under the one label Yao, but among themselves they know a host of distinctions, the Mien, the Bunu, the Lakkia, and others, each with its own history.

Their forebears are counted among the ancient peoples of southern China, kin in the deep past to the other mountain and valley peoples of the region. Pressed by the expansion of the Han and by the turmoil of the centuries, the Yao moved and scattered through the southern hills, and in later times some crossed the borders into Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, where they are known as the Dao or the Mien.

To speak of the Yao, then, is to speak of a people defined less by a single homeland than by a way of life in the mountains and by a shared body of custom and legend. Farmers of the high slopes, keepers of an unusual devotion to Taoism, and famous for the long hair of their women and the fine embroidery of their dress, they hold a distinctive place among the peoples of the Chinese south.

Mien, Yao, and the Names of a Scattered People

The name Yao is the term by which the Chinese state and the wider world know this people, and it is written with a character that the people themselves have not always welcomed, for older forms carried a slighting sense. Among many of the Yao the name they give themselves is Mien, or a word close to it, meaning simply the people, and it is by Mien that the largest branch is often known.

The many branches of the Yao bear their own names, drawn from their dress, their dialect, or their home. There are the Red Yao, famed for the long hair of their women, the White Trouser Yao, the Flowery Blue Yao, and many more, each a distinct community with its own customs. The Bunu speak a language of a wholly different family, yet count themselves Yao, so broad is the net the name casts.

Beyond China’s borders the same people are known by other names. In Vietnam they are the Dao, in Laos and Thailand often the Mien or Iu Mien, and by these names they have become known in the West through the communities that settled there after the wars of Indochina. Yet across all these borders they recognise a common origin and a shared body of custom and legend.

This wealth of names reflects the nature of the Yao themselves, a people gathered under one label by the state yet living as many distinct communities. To be Yao is to belong to one of these branches and, through it, to the wider family that shares the founding legends, the devotion to Taoism, and the long history of life in the southern mountains.

The Tongues of the Yao and Their Many Branches

The languages of the Yao are as varied as the people themselves, and here lies one of the puzzles of their identity, for the branches gathered under the single name do not all speak related tongues. The largest group, the Mien, speak languages of the Hmong-Mien family, kin to the tongues of the Miao, while other branches speak languages of quite different stock.

The Mien languages, chief among them the tongue often called Iu Mien, are spoken by the greater part of the Yao and form the heart of what is thought of as the Yao language. Like their Miao kin, these are tonal languages rich in distinctions of pitch, and they were long unwritten, carried instead in the memory and the song of the people, and in the Chinese characters used by their ritual masters.

Yet other branches counted as Yao speak languages of the Tai-Kadai family, as the Lakkia do, or of the Hmongic branch, as the Bunu do, so that the label Yao covers speakers of tongues from more than one family. This unusual state of affairs reflects the long history of the southern mountains, where peoples of different origins came to share a common way of life and a common identity.

In modern times the Yao, like other minorities of China, have increasingly learned standard Chinese for school, work, and dealings with the state, and many are now bilingual. Efforts have been made to write the Mien language in a romanised script, above all among the communities that settled abroad, but for most Yao the mother tongue remains above all a spoken language of the home and the village.

The Hills of Guangxi, Hunan, and the South

The homeland of the Yao is the mountain country of southern China, a broad arc of hills and highlands spread across several provinces. The greatest number live in Guangxi, in the far south, where a Yao autonomous county centres on the town of Jinxiu in the Dayao mountains, but large communities dwell also in Hunan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Yunnan, wherever the high forested slopes gave them a home apart.

This is a land of steep hills, deep valleys, and thick forest, a green and broken country of considerable beauty but hard for farming. The Yao settled the high slopes above the valleys, which were often already held by the Han or by the Zhuang, and there they cleared fields, terraced the hillsides for rice where they could, and lived by a mixture of settled and shifting cultivation.

On the famous terraced hills of Longsheng in Guangxi, the Yao, together with the Zhuang, cut the mountainsides into countless flooded steps that climb from the valley floor nearly to the summits, a landscape shaped by generations of patient labour. Elsewhere they cleared patches of forest for dry rice, maize, and other crops, moving on when the soil was spent in the old way of the hills.

Scattered across so wide a country and broken into so many branches, the Yao have no single centre but a host of mountain communities, each in its own valley or on its own range. What binds them is not a shared territory so much as a shared way of life in the high country and a common body of custom, so that the Yao homeland is best thought of as the southern mountains themselves.

The Charter of Emperor Ping and the Roving Fields

A cherished legend lies at the heart of the old Yao world, the story of the divine dog Panhu, who in the days of a legendary emperor won the hand of a princess and became the ancestor of the Yao. From this union, the tale holds, sprang the people, and the memory of Panhu is honoured in ritual and song among many Yao branches to this day, a founding myth that binds them together.

Tied to this legend is the tradition of a charter said to have been granted by a Chinese emperor, often remembered as Emperor Ping, a document that freed the Yao from taxes and labour service and confirmed their right to roam the mountains and clear the forest as they wished. Whether or not such a charter ever truly existed, the belief in it shaped the Yao sense of themselves as a free mountain people.

In the old way of life the Yao practised a roving cultivation, clearing a patch of forest by fire, cropping it for a few seasons, and then moving on to let it rest and clearing another. This shifting farming suited the steep, forested country and the belief in a right to roam, and it kept many Yao communities mobile, drifting across the mountains over the generations.

Yao society in these times was ordered by clan and village rather than by kings or great chiefs, for they built no centralised state. Village headmen and ritual masters guided the community, custom and the founding charter governed conduct, and the people lived in scattered mountain settlements, free of the valley officials below, keeping their own law and their own way in the high country.

The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Yao

Yao society rests on the household and the clan, the ties of descent that bind families across the scattered mountain villages. Descent is reckoned through the father’s line, and members of a clan share a common ancestor, honour the same forebears, and owe one another the duties of kin. The clan and the village, rather than any wider state, were the frame within which the Yao lived.

The village was the largest everyday unit of Yao life, a cluster of households on a mountain slope, guided by respected elders and by the ritual masters who held the sacred knowledge of the people. There was little of the rigid rank found among some of their neighbours, for the Yao built no nobility and no throne, and leadership rested on age, wisdom, and command of ritual rather than on inherited title.

Marriage joined two families and was marked by the giving of gifts and by feasting, and in some Yao communities the customs surrounding courtship and marriage were notably free, with young people given room to choose. Among certain branches a man might go to live with his wife’s family, and the ties of marriage wove the scattered clans of a district together.

Women held a place of real importance in Yao life, above all as the keepers of the famous embroidery and dress that mark each branch, and the long hair of the Red Yao women became a celebrated emblem of the people. The passage to adulthood, and among the men the great rite of Taoist ordination, marked the stages of life and bound each person into the community and its ancestors.

Taoism, the Ancestors, and the Ordination of Men

The religion of the Yao is among the most distinctive of any people in China, for they took the Taoism of the Han and made it wholly their own. Over centuries the Yao absorbed the gods, the scriptures, and the rituals of religious Taoism, blending them with their own worship of the ancestors and of Panhu, until Taoism became the very framework of their spiritual life, carried in books written in Chinese characters.

Central to this faith is the ordination of men as Taoist masters, a great rite through which a young man passes to become a full member of the religious community, entitled to perform the rituals and, in due course, to rejoin the ancestors after death. This ordination is one of the most important events in a Yao man’s life, marked by elaborate ceremony, the wearing of ritual robes, and the granting of a religious name.

The Yao ritual masters keep libraries of hand-copied scriptures, painted scrolls of the Taoist gods, and the knowledge of the chants and dances that summon and honour them. These masters lead the community in the rites of healing, of funerals, and of the great festivals, standing between the people and the crowded world of gods and spirits that the Yao inherited and transformed.

Alongside this Taoist framework the Yao keep the honouring of their own ancestors and of Panhu, the divine ancestor of the legend, and a rich body of belief in the spirits of the mountains, the fields, and the streams. In modern times Christianity has reached some Yao communities, above all abroad, but for most the old blend of Taoism and ancestor worship remains the heart of their spiritual world.

Long Hair, Embroidery, and the Ways of the Yao

Among the most celebrated of Yao customs is the long hair of the Red Yao women of Huangluo and the Longsheng hills, who by tradition cut their hair but once in their lives and let it grow to a great length, coiling and binding it in elaborate styles upon the head. Washed in fermented rice water, the hair is kept black and glossy into old age, and its dressing carries meanings of age, marriage, and status.

The dress of the Yao is a wonder of embroidery, and it is by their clothing that the many branches are told apart. The women embroider their jackets, skirts, trousers, and headcloths with intricate patterns in bright thread, in designs handed down through the generations, and a girl’s skill with the needle was once a measure of her worth. Silver ornaments and beaded headdresses complete the finery of many branches.

The rite of Taoist ordination stands among the great traditions of Yao life, a ceremony by which a man takes his place among the ordained and the ancestors. Alongside it the Yao keep the customs of courtship and marriage, the honouring of Panhu, and the long calendar of festivals that mark the farming year, each with its proper rituals, songs, and dances.

Song and dance run through Yao tradition, from the antiphonal love songs of courtship to the drum dances of the festivals. The long-drum dance, in which performers beat a slender waisted drum as they leap and turn, is a famous sight among several Yao branches, and the long-hair dance of the Red Yao women, in which they swing and dress their great tresses, has become an emblem of the people.

Weavers, Embroiderers, and the Healers of the Mountains

The chief craft of the Yao is the embroidery and weaving of their dress, an art carried by the women and learned from an early age. Working in bright thread on cloth dyed a deep indigo, they cover their garments with geometric and figured patterns, each branch with its own designs, and the finest work is a labour of months. Batik, the dyeing of cloth with patterns drawn in wax, is practised among some branches as well.

The Yao are also renowned as healers, and their traditional medicine, drawn from the rich plant life of the southern mountains, has become one of their best-known gifts. The Yao medicated bath, in which bundles of gathered herbs are boiled and the steaming water used for bathing, is celebrated across China, and Yao herbalists carry a deep knowledge of the roots, barks, and leaves of their forests.

Silverwork adorns the dress of the Yao, as it does that of their Miao neighbours, and the ornaments, headdresses, and jewellery of silver worn at festivals are the work of skilled smiths. The Yao also work in wood and bamboo, building their houses, carving the tools of daily life, and fashioning the long waisted drums that sound at their dances and rites.

Underlying all is the craft of the ritual masters, who copy by hand the Taoist scriptures and paint the scrolls of the gods that hang at the great ceremonies. These painted scrolls, bright with the figures of the Taoist heaven, are among the treasures of a Yao community, passed down and renewed, and they stand as a craft in the service of the people’s distinctive faith.

Rice, the Terrace, and the Table of the Uplands

The food of the Yao is the food of the southern mountains, built on rice grown in terraced paddies where the land allowed and on maize, sweet potatoes, and other dry-field crops on the higher slopes. Rice is the preferred staple, boiled or steamed, and the terraces that the Yao cut into the hillsides are among the finest works of their farming, climbing the mountains in countless flooded steps.

To the rice is added a relish of vegetables, gathered greens, beans, and the produce of the garden, with meat as the food of festivals rather than of every day. Pork is the favoured meat, kept by most households and killed for the great occasions, and chickens and ducks add to the feast. The forests and streams yield wild plants, fish, and game to enrich the mountain table.

A famous Yao food is oil tea, a hearty brew made by frying tea leaves with other ingredients and pouring the hot liquid over puffed rice, fried beans, and other morsels, eaten as a warming meal in the cool of the hills. Shared among neighbours and offered to guests, oil tea is a mark of Yao hospitality across several branches of the people.

Rice wine and other home-brewed liquors are the drink of hospitality and of ritual, poured for guests, shared at festivals, and offered to the ancestors and the gods. The preserving of meat and vegetables by pickling and smoking helped the Yao through the seasons, and the foods of the mountains, from bamboo shoots to wild herbs, gave variety to a diet rooted in the rice terrace and the hill field.

The Danu, the Harvest, and the Feasts of the Year

The festival calendar of the Yao turns on the farming year and on the honouring of their gods and ancestors. Among the most important is the Danu festival, kept by the Bunu Yao in honour of their ancestral mother goddess, a great occasion of feasting, of the beating of bronze drums, and of dance, held to give thanks and to pray for the welfare of the people in the year to come.

The Panwang festival, held in honour of King Pan, the divine ancestor Panhu of the founding legend, is among the most widely kept of Yao celebrations. On this day the people give thanks to their ancestor, perform the sacred rituals led by the Taoist masters, sing the long songs that tell the story of their origins, and gather to feast, dance, and renew the bonds of the community.

The turning of the seasons brings its own festivals, the rites of the new year, the ceremonies of planting and of harvest, when the community gathers to thank the gods for the crop and to pray for the next. These occasions are marked by the sounding of drums, the singing of songs, the wearing of the finest embroidered dress, and the sharing of rice wine and feast.

Weddings, funerals, and above all the great rite of Taoist ordination gather the kin and the community for days of ceremony. At all these occasions the antiphonal songs of the Yao, sung back and forth between singers, and the long-drum and long-hair dances bring colour and sound, so that the great moments of the year and of life alike are met with music, dance, and the honouring of the ancestors.

From the Southern Hills to the People of Modern China

The history of the Yao is a long tale of movement through the southern mountains, driven by the pressure of the expanding Han and by the search for land and freedom. Counted among the ancient peoples of southern China, the ancestors of the Yao were pushed from the lowlands into the highlands over many centuries, and there they spread across the ranges of the south, clearing forest and moving on in the old roving way.

Their relations with the Chinese state were often uneasy, and the records of the imperial dynasties tell of many Yao risings against the taxes, the land hunger, and the officials of the valleys below. Time and again the Yao of the mountains rose in revolt, and time and again they were put down, yet their remoteness and their mobility let them keep much of their freedom in the high country.

The great scattering of the Yao carried some of them beyond China’s borders, south into the mountains of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, where they settled as the Dao and the Mien. The wars of the twentieth century in Indochina uprooted many of these communities again, and numbers of Mien found refuge in the West, above all in the United States, carrying their scriptures and their scrolls with them.

Within China the Yao were recognised, after the founding of the People’s Republic, as one of the official nationalities of the state, and autonomous counties and a Yao autonomous county centred on Jinxiu were established in their homelands. The old roving cultivation has given way to settled farming and to the reach of roads, schools, and the wider economy, drawing the Yao into the life of modern China.

The Yao in Modern China

Today the Yao number some three million within China, one of the more populous of the country’s recognised minorities, living still chiefly in the mountains of the south across Guangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Yunnan. Autonomous counties in their homelands give a measure of local recognition, and the town of Jinxiu in Guangxi remains a centre of Yao life and culture.

Modern life has come to the Yao mountains in the shape of roads, schools, electricity, and the reach of the market. The old shifting cultivation has largely given way to settled terraced farming, cash crops, and the growing trade in tourism, for the terraced hills, the long-haired women, and the colourful festivals of the Yao draw many visitors to villages such as those of the Longsheng hills.

As with other minorities, the pull of the cities and of migrant labour has drawn many younger Yao away to the factories and towns of the coast, and standard Chinese and modern schooling have spread among them. This brings both opportunity and strain, for the mother tongues, the embroidery, and the old rituals face the pressure of a changing world and of a generation raised in a wider China.

Yet the Yao carry their heritage with evident pride. The Taoist ordination and the painted scrolls, the embroidery and the silver, the medicated baths and the herbal lore, the long hair and the drum dances all endure, cherished as marks of who the Yao are. Scattered across the southern mountains and beyond, they keep alive a distinctive and ancient way among the many peoples of China.