A History of Daoism and the Yao People of South China By Eli Alb ...

Introduction

The Discovery of Yao Daoism

The term “Yao” ()¹ refers to a non-sinitic² speaking, southern “Chinese”³ people who originated in central China, south of the Yangzi River. Peoples identified as Yao, whose cultures, until recently, were characterized by a reliance on swidden or slash and burn agriculture, upland habitation, and widespread migratory patterns, live in the southern Chinese provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan; in Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand; and in the last few decades, in Europe and North America. Despite categorization by Chinese and Western scholars of Yao as an ethnic minority with a primitive culture, it is now recognized that not only are certain strains of religious Daoism prominent in Yao ritual traditions, but Yao share many elements with pre-modern official and mainstream Chinese culture: their cosmology, their festive calendar, their pantheon of deities with its heavenly hierarchy, their system of ritual practices, and their script.⁴ All Yao scriptures are written in a variant of Chinese, marked by a combination of literary, vernacular, and even southern Chinese and Yao dialectal elements. This unique combination