Palaung

The Palaung, who call themselves Ta'ang and are known in China as the De'ang, are an Austroasiatic people of the Shan hills and the Yunnan border. Chinese sources trace them to the Pu people of the second century BC, settled on both banks of the Salween.

Their ancestors, the Golden Teeth people, held their own polity from the twelfth to the fifteenth century before its decline left them subjects of Shan saopha chiefs under the Yuan dynasty of 1271 to 1368 and later rule. They speak Palaungic Mon-Khmer languages, and many also speak Shan and Burmese.

They are hill farmers whose villages stand among tea gardens, every household growing tea. Most profess Theravada Buddhism, sending boys to monastery schools, while still honouring nature spirits called nats; women wear coloured rattan waist hoops, a custom traced to the Mang tribe of the Tang era.