Kra

Kra, also called Geyang or Kadai, is the branch of the Kra-Dai family closest to the Kam-Sui languages, scattered from western Guizhou and Guangxi through southeastern Yunnan to northern Vietnam. Most of its dozen or so tongues are heavily intermingled with Zhuang, Bouyei and Chinese.

The Gelao are regarded as indigenous people of Guizhou, descended from the Rau of the ancient kingdom of Yelang, and the Bo of southern Sichuan, famed for their cliffside hanging coffins and bronze drums, may also have spoken a Kra language. The Bo fortress of Lingxiao was the last southern holdout against the Mongols, falling in 1288.

In 1573 Ming armies overran the Bo strongholds in Gong County, after which the people disappear from written records. Kra languages had no traditional script, though Gelao singers around Anshun sometimes used characters derived from Chinese to record folk songs.