Yao folk religion
ethnic religion of the Yao people in China, heavily based on Taoism since the 13th century, similar to the communitarian Taoism in the earliest Taoist movements in China proper
Yao folk religion, also known as Meishan Sect (梅山教) is the ethnic religion of the Yao people, a non-Sinitic ethnic group who reside in the Guangxi, Hunan and surrounding provinces of China. Their religion has been profoundly intermingled with Taoism since the 13th century, so much that it is frequently defined as Yao Taoism (瑶族道教 Yáozú Dàojiào). In the 1980s it was found that the Yao clearly identified with the Chinese-language Taoist theological literature, seen as a prestigious statute of culture (文化 wénhuà).
Yao folk religion was described by a Chinese scholar of the half of the 20th century as an example of deep "Taoisation" (道教化 Dàojiàohuà). Yao core theology and cosmology is Taoist; they worship the deities of canonical Taoism (above all the Three Pure Ones) as the principal deities, while lesser gods are those who pertain to their own indigenous pre-Taoisation religion.
The reason of this tight identification of Yao religion and identity with Taoism is that in Yao society every male adult is initiated as a Taoist, and Yao Taoism is therefore a communal religion; this is in sharp contrast to Chinese Taoism, which is an order of priests disembedded from the common Chinese folk religion. A shared sense of Yao identity is based additionally on tracing their descent from the mythical ancestor Panhu.
Social aspects
Yao Taoism has been seen as representing a conservative form of religious practice, exhibiting parallels with the communitarian Taoism that flourished with the earliest Taoist movements in China proper and the collective fasts of medieval China. Although the Yao are speakers of non-Sinitic Mienic languages, their Taoist liturgical tradition is in Chinese language and writing.
The strong identity of Yao society as a Taoist Church, and their high literacy, are seen as the factors of Southeast Asian Yaos' proud resistance to Christian missionary penetration of their communities in the 1960s and 1970s.
The public source identifies “Yao folk religion” as ethnic religion of the Yao people in China, heavily based on Taoism since the 13th century, similar to the communitarian Taoism in the earliest Taoist movements in China proper. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around folk, religion and ethnic.
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