Minorities People

Dao Ethnic Group

Culture, Customs, and Practices of the Dao People

Key Features:

Housing: The homes of the Dao people vary significantly, including ground houses, stilt houses, or half-stilt, half-earth houses.

Family Structure: Patriarchal system.

Traditional Clothing: In the past, men wore long hair tied at the back of the neck or in a long tuft on top of the head, shaved around. Different Dao groups often have different ways of wearing headscarves. There are two types of shirts, long and short.

Dao women wear a variety of clothes, often wearing long tunics, skirts, or pants. The clothing is very colorful. They embroider entirely from memory on the left side of the fabric so that the pattern appears on the right side. Many types of

patterns such as characters, pine trees, birds, humans, animals, leaves. Dao people print patterns on fabric using beeswax, using pens or dipping molds into melted beeswax and then printing on fabric. After dyeing with indigo, the patterns appear greenish due to the beeswax layer not being soaked in indigo.

Cuisine: The Dao people mainly eat rice, in some places eating more corn than rice or porridge. They also enjoy boiled meat, various dried and pickled meats, and sour bamboo shoot soup.

Festivals: The Dao people celebrate Tet in January, worship ancestors in January, July, and December. Depending on the Dao group, there are specific days for worshiping ancestors. Additionally, there are life-cycle rituals such as coming-of-age ceremonies, wedding proposals, funerals, health prayers, and ghost worshiping ceremonies.