The Gelao people are often considered to be the aboriginal inhabitants of Guizhou. The ancestors of the Gelao were the Liáo, who made up the population of the ancient Yelang kingdom.
Language
The Gelao languagebelongs to the Kadai language family. Today, only a small minority of the Gelaos still speak this language. Since the various Gelao dialects differ greatly from each other, Mandarin has been used as a lingua franca and is now the main language spoken by Gelaos. The Miao, Yi and Buyei languages are also used.
Culture
The traditional suits of the men consist of jacket done up to a side and long pants. The women wear short jackets and narrow skirts divided into three parts: the head office is elaborate in red wool while the other two are of fabric bordered in black and white colors. Men and women wear long scarves. In their traditional music, the Gelao use a two-stringed fiddle with a body made from a cow horn, called the jiaohu. The Gelao people have their own language, Gelao. At present, only more than a thousand Gelao people can speak this language. The Gelao language differs greatly from place to place due to scattered living. Most Gelao people speak many languages such as Chinese, Miao, Yi, and Bouyei. Gelao folk circulates oral literature such as poetry and proverbs. Ancient folk songs consist of long and short sentences of varying numbers of words. In the past two or three hundred years, they have been greatly influenced by the genre of Han poetry, and many have borrowed Chinese words and phrases.
Language
It was previously thought that the Gelao people only had a spoken language, not a written one. However, in September 2008, The History of Jiu Tian Da Ling was found in Guizhou. The book is kept by a Gelao person with a surname of Li in Qianbei, whose ancestors were from the Song Dynasty. A descendant of King Li Wentong of Gulao, he himself does not know what kind of book this is, but he has always inherited his ancestral teachings and regards this book as a treasure. The discovery of Record of the Nine Heavens fully proved that the Gelao people is an ancient people with a long history and splendid culture. It not only has a written language, but it was also the earliest nation that advocated the concept of "harmony and harmony." The inventors of tea, fireworks, copper, iron, etc., also proved that the Gelao tribe had their own words. However, through identification, the distribution area of the Gelao ethnic group described in Record of the Nine Heavens is consistent with the local declaration after the mid-1980s, deviating from the local history records of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Also, the description of the ancient song "Sue Genyou" in Gelao, and the grammatical errors of the classical Chinese and Gelao in "The History of Nine Heavens" contain many grammatical errors, hinting at the possibility of a modern-day forgery. The Gelao people living in the western part of Guizhou, such as Anshun, used to have Gelao characters made of six Chinese characters, which are used to record some folk songs.
Subgroups
The Gelao consist of various subgroups. Their historical exonyms, given in a provincial ethnic gazetteer from the Republic of China era, include the following.
The :zh:羿人|Yiren, who number no more 3,000 people, live in the Chishui area in Xuyong County, Sichuan, which is on the border with Guizhou. They are a subgroup of the Gelao but have a distinctive history. The Yiren call themselves the gau13. In comparison, the Gelao of Xinzhai 新寨, Puding 普定, Guizhou, call themselves the qau13. The Yiren live in:
Chishui village 赤水镇, Xuyong County 叙永县, Sichuan
Napangou 纳盘沟, Gulin County 古蔺县, Sichuan. According to the Gulin County Almanac, ethnic Gelao and Yiren are found on the northern banks of the Chishui River 赤水河, in Napan township 纳盘乡.
Xiaohe 小河, Puyi 普宜, Bijie County 毕节县, Guizhou
Yindi 阴底, Bijie County 毕节县, Guizhou
The :zh:羿人|Yiren have been mentioned since the Tang Dynasty, and were said to have come from the north. The Yiren are also noted for their belief in the Zitong Bodhisattva. Unlike most Gelao dialects, the Yiren dialect uses a Loloish-derived numeral system.
