文：李少梅

China has ten Yao autonomous counties and four autonomous counties of Yao and other ethnic groups. Yao people are found mostly in Chinas southern provinces of Hunan, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Jiangxi and in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Living in small communities in many areas constitutes the uniqueness of Yao people: you cannot find a mountain in southern China without Yao people.

The Yao ethnic group has a population of over 2 million in China.

Over 600,000 people of Yao origin live in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, the United States, France, and Canada. Their ancestors moved there around 1700 during the later period of the Ming Dynasty and the early period of the Qing Dynasty.

The history of Yao survival is a long history of migration.

The Yao ethnic group has four branches with each having a name for itself. The one called Mien has the most population, is found in more areas than others and includes all overseas Yao people. The Yao people who call themselves Pu Nu is found mostly in Du'an, Dahua, Bama and other counties in western Guangxi. Most of those name themselves Lak Kia live in Jinxiu, Guangxi. The Yao people called Pin to jiu are found in Fuchuan and other counties in Guangxi. There are many other names of these Yao people given by themselves or others.

The name of Yao people changed in history. In ancient times, Chinese documents referred to all the tribes in the Yangtze-Hanshui valley and the drainage areas of the Yangtze River south of the Central Plains as “Nanman”or “Man.”The ancestors of Yao people were part of them. From 420 to 960 during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui and Tang dynasties and the Five Dynasties, Chinese documents called Yao people “Moyao”as well as “Nanman”and “Man.”Chinese documents from 960 to 1911 during the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties called these people “Yao”as well as “Manman”and “Man.”They were called “Yao”from 1921 to 1949 during the Republic of China. Following the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, they were named the “Yao ethnic group.?So during this process, Yao people changed their name from Man to Moyao and then to Yao.

Yao people mainly lived in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in ancient times. Social chaos, oppression by other ethnic groups, natural disasters, infertile land and other factors caused these people to migrate from the north to the south and from the east to the west in the long history of over 1,500 years. This is how they migrated:

rom 221 BC-220 AD during the Qin and Han dynasties, Yao people were already found in the Dongting Lake area in Hunan Province and in the Poyang Lake area in Jiangxi Province.

From 581 to 907 during the Sui and Tang dynasties, these people in northern Hunan Province gradually migrated to the southern part of the province, to Lianzhou County in northern Guangdong Province, and to Guanyang County in Guangxi.

From 960 to 1368 during the Song and Yuan dynasties, more of them moved to Guangdong and Guangxi.

From 1368 to 1911 in the Ming and Qing dynasties, many Yao people were found throughout Guangdong and Guangxi. At the same time, some Yao people in Guangxi migrated to Guizhou, Yunnan and other provinces.

From 1616 to 1911 during the Qing Dynasty, the modern distribution of the Yao people was formed in China, and it is still the same today.

Then when and from which part of China did Yao people migrate to other countries?

They began to do so approximately two or three hundred years ago from Guangdong and Guangxi to southeastern and northern Vietnam and from Yunnan Province to northern Vietnam and Laos and northeastern Myanmar. Some of those who migrated to Laos moved further to Thailand. It is particularly worth mentioning that Yao people in China still have the poetic letters sent back to China from their compatriots in Vietnam in the Qing Dynasty (Yao people are good at writing poetic letters). These are called Vietnamese songs.

In the 1950s, some Yao people in Laos took refuge in Thailand. Some other countries granted asylum to these refugees. That is why Yao people are now found in the United States, France and Canada.

So after over 1,500 years of migration, Yao people became a worldwide ethnic group 50 years ago.

Historically, after they moved out of China, Yao people did not contact much with their compatriots in China. Historical changes took place in the friendly contacts between Yao people in China and their compatriots in other countries after 1984 when a delegation of the American Yao Association visited the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, China. The visiting delegation and the universitys Yao language experts discussed how to make the written forms of Chinese and American Yao language the same. Since then, there have been unprecedented visits paid by overseas Yao people to China to examine their history, see friends or carry out academic exchanges.

Yao people had a wealth of experience in migration. Generally, they had two ways of migration. One was to travel to their destinations directly, and the other was to gradually migrate from mountains to mountains. They migrated mostly in the second way. Before migrating to a certain area, some family members or villagers would investigate the areas first. When decision was made to move to an area, one or two members of every family of the village would go there first to build houses and engage in farming to prepare for the subsequent arrival of others. They would move out of the area to another mountain after the land there became infertile in about five years. They sometimes exchanged mountains once a year. That is why Yao people are known as “migrating people from mountain to mountain,”and “eople moving about in quest of arable land,”and even as the Gypsies in the East.

Historically, according to the world outlook of Yao people, they believed that they should have access to all mountains no matter in which county, province or country it was found. It is interesting that in the ancient times Yao people handwrote the famous Proclamation on Migrating Through Mountains, which was mainly designed to protect them during their migration and farming from mountains to mountains. According to some of the proclamations provisions, Yao people should not pay tax for their farming in mountains, go down on their knees before officials, or be prevented by the government from migration. It was said that the proclamation was recognized by Chinese feudal governments and went into force. Overseas scholars referred to the proclamation as a passport for Yao people. In the 1980s the proclamation was publicly published and distributed.

The Yao is a unique ethnic group. More and more people are paying attention to its past and present.