Music and dances of the Long-Hair Yao People

The Yao are a minority community in south China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. In the tourist area around Guilin (Guanxi, China) they are encouraged to make some of their living from tourism, and this is part of the show they put on. The village we saw (2012) looked reasonably prosperous and the performers were clearly proud of their heritage, but outside there were the usual over-insistent souvenir-hawkers which plague Chinese tourism. Judging from old photographs found elsewhere, the costume they wear here is quite authentic, and certainly marks them out from the Han Chinese.