Kam

The Kam, who call themselves Gaeml and are officially the Dong, are a Kam–Sui people of the Tai–Kadai family in the borderlands of eastern Guizhou, western Hunan and northern Guangxi, with smaller communities in Vietnam. They are held to descend from the ancient Rau, and Chinese scholars trace them to a Bai Yue branch of the first century CE; the Bai Yue split into small chiefdoms after the Yue kingdom fell.

The Kam language had no script, and villagers borrowed Chinese characters to write Kam sounds. The name Dong first appears in records of the Ming, who ruled from 1368.

Under the Ming and the Qing after 1644, Kam risings repeatedly challenged imperial rule, while Qing officials extended hill irrigation and enlarged the rice harvest. Kam villages were famed for timber carpentry, covered wind-and-rain bridges, wet-rice farming and polyphonic choral singing.