Yao Culture ID

The Yao culture belongs to the highland peoples of southern China and northern Southeast Asia, related in language to the Hmong within the Hmong-Mien family. They inhabited the forested mountains, often migrating in search of new land.

Yao communities relied on shifting cultivation in the hills, clearing and planting mountain plots, supplemented by hunting and the gathering of forest products.

Yao religious life was notably shaped by Taoist influence absorbed from the Chinese, blended with the veneration of ancestors and spirits, and preserved in ritual texts and ceremonies.

Mobile, highland, and distinct in custom, the Yao formed one of the many mountain cultures that fringed the southern Chinese world.