Yao | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The Yao are a minority people living in southern and southwestern China, mostly in the mountainous regions of Guangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Jiangxi Provinces. The Yao total 2.1 million people (1990 census) and rank as the thirteenth most populous of China's fifty-five minority nationalities. The majority of the Yao, more than 1.2 million, live in Guangxi; fewer than 1,000 live in Jiangxi. The Yao groups are scattered in many areas; their communities, usually small in size, consist exclusively of Yao. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Yao groups identified themselves by over thirty names. But in the 1950s, the central government redefined all Yao groups and named them all "Yao."

The origin of the Yao is debated. Most Western, Chinese, and Yao scholars believe that the Yao became an ethnic group during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) when the term mo yao (not subject to corvée) was first used to refer to the upland people living in the mountains of Hunan and northern Guangdong and Guangxi. The central government allowed these people to search for arable land free from obligations— taxes and in particular corvée—to the imperial regime. After the identifier mo ("not") was dropped in later dynasties, the term yao gradually became associated more with the groups of upland people who traced their origins to an ancestral king, Pan Hu, than with a political category defining the people who were not subject to corvée.

It is conceivable that the Yao people did not become a distinct ethnic group until the Song dynasty (960–1279). During the Song and after, the central government ruled the Yao areas by jimi ("loose reins") policy and the tusi ("local chiefs") system, allowing the Yao chiefs to have autonomous power to govern their realms but requiring them to pledge loyalty to the imperial regime. By the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the central government replaced jimi and tusi with the policy of gaitu guiliu ("replacing locals with officials"), sending Han Chinese (the Chinese majority ethnicity) officials to rule the Yao areas; the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) continued the policy. The process of replacing locals, along with policies of ethnic discrimination during the Ming and Qing dynasties (for example, prohibiting the Yao from engaging in the salt trade) inspired tenacious resistance among the Yao.

During the Song dynasty and earlier, the Yao lived mainly in communes, in which families worked together and shared equally. Apart from a small portion who moved to valleys and plains and engaged in agriculture, most of the Yao lived in the mountains, basing their life on hunting, fishing, and slash-and-burn cultivation on hillsides. To flee the Mongol invasion and encroaching Chinese immigration from the north, in the early years of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), the Yao began to migrate southward. By the early Ming dynasty, the majority of the Yao had settled in Guangxi, and smaller portions had settled in other provinces. The migration changed the geographic distribution of the Yao population, a distribution that remains today. The migration also changed the economic life of many Yao. A large portion of them adopted agricultural production, although those who remained in the deep mountains preserved their traditional way of life.

In modern times, the Yao maintained their tradition of resistance against the penetration of the Chinese central authority. Uprisings continued; many Yao people joined the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) that originated in Guangxi. The Nationalists (Guomindang) adopted a policy of assimilation, attempting to promote Yao economy and culture. However, the Yao resisted and the assimilation attempts failed.

During the first two years after the founding of the People's Republic of China (1949), the government defined the Yao as a discrete nationality. Beginning with the establishment of the Longsheng Yao Autonomous County in Guangxi in 1951, the government in the next two decades established twelve Yao autonomous counties and over two thousand Yao autonomous towns or administrative villages. Under a policy of equality for all nationalities, the government trained many Yao cadres and extended its political administration to the Yao areas through these cadres. The Yao people in the deep mountains also began to give up slash-and-burn cultivation. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the government's minority work was halted when some Yao youths organized the Red Guards organizations to rebel against local authorities, who consisted of both Han and Yao officials; religious rituals and traditional festivals were prohibited.

In 1979, the government reassured the Yao of their rights and privileges as a minority nationality and promoted their equality more in the light of economic development. Since then Yao communities have experienced progress in agriculture, education, and health care. Reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants have been built; indigo, anise, and spices have been planted and are now important economic products; and the Yao mountainous regions have been developed for the timber industry and tourism. With more autonomous power under the government's reform policy, the Yao have also revived their traditions. But despite these developments, Yao communities are still poor in economic terms and far behind those of the Han Chinese.

Half the Yao speak the Yao language, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language, but their dialects vary so significantly that Yao from different areas can hardly communicate with each other. The rest speak mainly Miao and Dong languages—the Sino-Tibetan languages of two other minority nationalities. Because of their long tradition of migration and association with the Han and Zhuang people in history, many Yao can also speak Han and Zhuang languages. The Yao write using Chinese characters. Although they have a long history of living with other nationalities, the Yao people usually marry only other Yao.

The Yao have a long tradition of oral literature, mostly legendary stories about their ancestors. Most of the Yao practice Taoism and ancestor worship, and the Taoist rituals and ancestor worship ceremonies, except during the Cultural Revolution, have always been practiced with great respect. The Yao also have many festivals, of which the most famous is the King Pan Festival to remember Pan Hu, celebrated by all Yao communities. The Yao are known for their unique ways of dressing, in particularly their men's turbans and women's clothes, which are very colorful. In the past, many of the Yao subgroups were actually named after their turbans and dresses, such as the "white-trouser Yao," "flowery Yao," "flat-turban Yao," and "red-turban Yao."

For most of their history, Yao economic and social development has been uneven, determined by their locations. Although the government defines them as one minority nationality, establishing a cohesive ethnic identity is still difficult, given the people's wide dispersion, the barrier of dialects, and the uneven socioeconomic development of their communities.

Litzinger, Ralph. (2000) Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ma, Yin. (1989) China's Minority Nationalities. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

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