Lianshan Zhuang and Yao Autonomous County
Yes, I would like to join the trip!
It was very sudden that my mother, my aunt, my uncle, and I decided to visit Yao village in China in 2017. The story started when I got an email from my friend from Macao saying that she was planning to visit Qiangyuang, Guangdong Province, China with her husband and if I would be interested in visiting there with them! 😄
When I asked about her trip schedule and plan, she explained that they were going to visit Yao Autonomous County since a couple of her husband's students wanted to visit there to finish their thesis during that summer. My friend's husband is a history professor in Macao, and a couple of his students were writing a thesis about Yao people who are one of the minority groups living in China. I had never heard of Yao people before so that I thought that it would be a nice experience to learn about their lifestyle, culture, and tradition. I thought it was like an anthropology field trip or something. 😆🤩 Well, I love anthropology and history 😀👍 Well, but, in reality, we were just curious and excited tourists from Japan. I hope that we did not bother Yao people too much though. 🙏
So, when she asked me to join the trip, I said "Yes! I would like to join the trip!". 🙌
I felt so lucky that they allowed us to join the trip. Having nice friends makes your life pretty exciting, don´t you think? I feel very fortunate to call them as friends. Thank you very much!!
Who are Yao people?
So, who are Yao people? According to Wikipand, Yao people are " The Yao people (its majority branch is also known as Mien; simplified Chinese: 瑶族; traditional Chinese: 瑤族; pinyin: Yáo zú; Vietnamese: người Dao) is a government classification for various minorities in China and Vietnam." - Wikiwand.
Yao people in Wikiwand
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Yao_people
This picture was extracted from Wikiwand, and this is just a reference only. I mean that each regional Yao tribe seems that they have their unique design and patterns on their clothes to distinguish themselves from other regional Yao tribes. So, this woman, actually, does not exactly the same as the people in the village where we visited in 2017.
They look like this dancer who we met in the village. 😃👏👏
Entering the village
We drove up to the mountains and then we parked the cars before we actually entered the village. From the nearest town where we stayed; Qingyuan, it was more than 2 to 3 hours away, I remember. Then we walked up to the mountains for about 1 to 2 hours in the village. As you may realize that they live in the mountains. 🏔🏔🏔 As Han Chinese people expanded their territories, Yao people had to leave the land and escaped to the mountains. 😑
They live in the mountains so that they do not have much land to cultivate crops. But, there are a couple of fields they were cultivating corn and some vegetables near the village. Their lifestyle may seem simple, and it looks like the countryside in Japan. It has many similarities between the village and villages in Japan.
In the village, there are houses, fields, graves, small stores, and a school. Interestingly, there is a school which was built by the Communist Party and they have to go there to learn Chinese. Well, it seems that the local Communist Party has some influence on this small village. They explained that they use the Yao language but at the same time, they have to learn Chinese at the school as a mandatory subject. Well, it is is a very touchy subject, as you may realize.
I was a bit surprised that many cows suddenly came from behind. Haha! Children were helping their parents taking care of their cows.
In the Yao village
This village is not a tourist place so that it was very cool to see how they live without any commercialized stores and tourist shops. We could see how they live normally in their daily life in the village.
All people in the village wear red cloth on their heads, and I thought it was very beautiful. 😃 It looked like "hachimaki" in Japan.
My mother told me that she was like in her old house in Japan. I also realized that there were many similarities between her old house in the countryside in Japan and the Yao village. Well, maybe all Asian villages have some similarities.
As you know that the Communist Party will not allow any religions in China, but it seems that they compromise with the Yao people and allow them to believe in their local religion, their ingenious religion, and mixed Daoism.
If you know about their religion, please teach me about it. I couldn't figure out their native religion...it looks like Daoism, but it is not. I am not sure...
Then we drove back to the town...
On the way to the town, Qingyuan where we stayed, we stopped by a small Yao village. Traditionally, the Yao people live in the mountains where we visited, but they told me that some Yao people started leaving the mountains and living here. Some Yao people decided to get married to Han Chinese so that they can lead a "better" life. Some village people told us that living in the mountains is not easy and they can have a larger portion of land if they decide to leave the mountains and live here. But, at the end of the story, they explained that they have to start paying some tax if they decided to leave the mountains and live here, but paying tax (some tax) is exempt if you decide to live in the mountains as Yao. I thought it was very interesting. Well, this is the topic which my friend´s husband's student was studying, so I will leave the touchy topic to her instead. 😄😉🙏
What a cool trip I had! I thank my friends! I hope that the Yao people will preserve their native culture and tradition well. I want to visit there someday once again.