Characteristics of the Miao:
1: China's Miao people live in the Wuling Mountain area at the junction of Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, and Chongqing and its neighboring Miaoling and Moon Mountain in Qiandongnan, Da and Xiao Maoshan in Qiandongnan, Dameo Mountain in Guangxi, and Wumeng Mountain in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Yu, etc. The Miao people have two kinds of surnames, one of which is Miao and the other is Han.
2: There are two kinds of surnames among the Miao, one is Miao and the other is Han. The Miao surname is originally inherent in the Miao people, and is used as a symbol to distinguish between clans, and is mainly used within the Miao group. Since the ancient writing of the Miao has been lost, the Chinese characters could not express the Miao surname when it was entered into the household register, so the Miao used the Han surname again to facilitate external use.
3: One of the characteristics of the Miao religion is that it has a large number of complicated religious ceremonies, mysticism, secret rituals, secret tracks, legends, solar calendars, incantations, and herbal medicines. It can be said that all kinds of mysterious religious ceremonies that existed in the early days of mankind have basically taken up all of them in the traditional customs of the Miao people. In the Miao's own culture, these religious rituals only serve the simple purposes of life, such as honoring ancestors, exorcising ghosts, worshipping the sky, and marrying.
4: Another feature of Miao customs is that women's costumes are extremely complex and beautiful, with a great deal of jewelry, and Miao women's embroidery is on a par with Suzhou embroidery.
The Miao people mainly live in the southeast of Guizhou Province, Guangxi Damiao Mountain, Hainan Island and Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi and other provinces and regions of the border zone, population: 970,000 people. The Miao have a long history. In ancient Chinese texts, there are records about the ancestors of the Miao more than 5,000 years ago, which are the clans and tribes from the Yellow River basin to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River known as the "Southern Barbarians". The Miao do not have a written language, and the Miao language belongs to the Miao branch of the Miao-Yao language family of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Miao people live in the high mountains, mainly agricultural, crops include dry rice. Baogu, buckwheat, potatoes and beans, cash crops are hemp, usually their own hemp, their own textile. The Miao people have a rich oral folk literature, such as ancient songs, poems, love songs and so on. The Miao people are also good at dancing, and the Lusheng dance is the most popular.
The Miao have their own language, which is divided into three major dialects: Xiangxi, Qiandong and Chuanqianyan.
After 1956, a script program in the form of the Latin alphabet was devised. Because of the long history of interaction between the Miao and Han Chinese, a large proportion of the Miao are fluent in both Chinese and Chinese.
The Miao region is mainly agricultural, supplemented by hunting. The Miao's arts and crafts, such as flower picking, embroidery, brocade weaving, batik, paper-cutting, and jewelry making, are magnificent and colorful, and are famous both at home and abroad. Among them, the batik craft of the Miao people has a thousand-year history. There are more than 130 kinds of Miao costumes, which are comparable to those of any other ethnic group in the world. The Miao are an ethnic group that can sing and dance well, and are especially famous for their love songs and wine songs. The Lusheng is the most representative musical instrument of the Miao people.
Miao Customs
The Miao pay great attention to etiquette. Guests visit, must kill chickens and ducks hospitality, if it is a long way to the guests, the Miao people used to invite guests to drink ox horn wine. Eat chicken, chicken head to honor the guests in the elders, chicken legs to give the youngest guests. In some places, there is also the custom of sharing the heart of the chicken, that is, the oldest master of the family uses chopsticks to flick the heart of the chicken or duck to the guest, but the guest can not eat it himself, and must share the heart of the chicken equally with the old people in the audience. If the guests have a small capacity for alcohol and do not like to eat fat meat, they can explain the situation and the host will not force them to do so, but if they do not eat and drink enough, they will be regarded as looking down on the host.
The Miao people pay attention to the true feelings, very warm, the most taboo pomposity and hypocrisy. The master of the road to meet the guests do not take the first step, do not walk in front; conversation with honorific address; welcome guests to wear festive clothing; to the guests to the village outside the wine to welcome; guests to the door, the male host to call the door to inform the hostess at home, the hostess to sing the door to welcome the guests; in front of the guests, the hostess does not climb up the stairs; banquets to chickens, ducks to treat the guests as a delicacy, especially to the heart, the liver of the most expensive, to be the first to give to the guests or the elderly, the guests will be divided to the crowd to enjoy, the order of the guests to enjoy, and then to the guests. The guests would then share the food with all the people, in the order of the eldest and then the youngest. Guests should not call the host "Miaozi", they like to call themselves "Meng".
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia entry Miao: web link