IN the depth of the rugged mountains
in the Golden Triangle dwells a group of unique people. More than 80,000 strong,
living in over 300 villages scattered in Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand,1 they
constitute less than 4 percent of the total population of their Yao ethnic
origin from in China. They have no modern technology, no formal social organization
above the village level, not even a written language of their own. Nonetheless,
they strive to maintain their way of life. Known to the Lao-Thai as “chaokao”
or “mountain people,” they call themselves “Yao.” To their elders’ preference,
however, they are “King Pan’s children.”
Since 1997, I have conducted extended ethnographic fieldwork in Greenhill,2
one of the largest Yao villages in the Golden Triangle, with a population
of 1,270 living in 124 households. The goal of my research was to study the
Yao as a transnational society. My motive was embedded in my belief that an
understanding of the Yao in Southeast Asia is essential to a complete understanding
the ethnic Yao as a unified ethnic group of China. My method was to appreciate
the Yao culture through an in-depth study of a typical Yao village.
In the following, drawing upon my ethnographic fieldwork in Greenhill, I sketch
some highlights of Yao religion, with an emphasis on the features that I interviewed
the Yao about and observed directly.
