Málǎo

The Málǎo are the Yue-speaking people of the Qin-Lian coast, around Hepu, Lingshan and Qinzhou in southern Guangxi. Their speech belongs to the old local layer of Qin-Lian Yue, whose best-known form is Lianzhou speech, named after the former prefecture seated at Hepu.

In eastern Hepu and Pubei the Hakka call Lianzhou speakers Malao, or jute people, either for the jute they grew or for the bamboo hats and linen clothes they wore, and the name attached itself to their dialect.

Hepu commandery was founded in 111 BCE under the Han emperor Wu. Yue-speaking migrants mixed with the indigenous Kra-Dai peoples, leaving the dialect with Kra-Dai vocabulary beneath its Cantonese-like grammar. The old local speeches are barely mutually intelligible with the Guangzhou-style Cantonese of the newer port towns.