Gelao

The Gelao, who call themselves Klau, are regarded as the oldest indigenous people of Guizhou, scattered through its western mountains, with smaller communities in Guangxi and northern Vietnam. Their ancestors were the Rau tribes who peopled the ancient polity of Yelang, an alliance of farming tribes first recorded in the third century BC and absorbed by the Han dynasty in 111 BC, whose graves hold bronze swords and the custom of burying the head in a bronze pot.

The Gelao language belongs to the Kra branch of Kra–Dai and splits into mutually unintelligible varieties named by dress as White, Green, Red and Chinese Gelao; as the villages grew scattered, most Gelao spoke neighbouring tongues, including Mandarin and Miao.

Around Anshun they kept Chinese-derived characters for recording folk songs. Their traditional religion centred on Taoist rites, with a Buddhist minority.