Yáo'ān

Yao’an was a Bai native prefecture centred on Yaozhou in central Yunnan. Its hereditary Gao chiefs descended from Gao Taixiang, a Dali chancellor killed resisting the Mongols in 1253; his sons received Yao’an from Kublai.

The Ming made Yao’an a prefecture in 1382 and a military-civil prefecture in 1394. The twenty-fourth chief, Gao Wengying, became a noted Confucian scholar, but in 1729 his grandson Gao Houde was exiled for misconduct and hereditary rule ended after twenty-six generations. The prefecture was dissolved into Chuxiong in 1770.