File:Baisha, Miao ladies.jpg

English: Baisha, Miao ladies

The Baisha Miao are a subgroup of the Miao tribe located in southeastern Guizhou. The Miao is an ethnic group belonging to South China, and is recognized by the government of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component groups of people, which include (with some variant spellings) Hmong, Hmub, Xong (Qo-Xiong), and A-Hmao.

The Chinese government has grouped these people and other non-Miao peoples together as one group, whose members may not necessarily be either linguistically or culturally related, though the majority are members of Miao-Yao language family, which includes the Hmong, Hmub, Xong and A-Hmao and the majority do share cultural similarities. Because of the previously given reasons, many Miao peoples cannot communicate with each other in their native tongues and have different histories and cultures.

The Miao live primarily in southern China's mountains, in the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan. Some sub-groups of the Miao, most notably the Hmong people, have migrated out of China into Southeast Asia (Burma (Myanmar), northern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand).

The Baisha Miao are well-known in China for their especially well preserved traditional clothing as well as the daggers and old muskets they carry. The Baisha are one of the few groups in China allowed to legally carry guns. The men also wear an unusual hairdo which recalls the Qing dynasty queue, a partially shaven head with a long pig-tail. The fact that the Baisha men usually wear their hair in a top-knot combined with their loose fitting clothing (including daggers) lends them a certain Samurai look, which is quite impressive.

The women also wear beautiful, elaborately embroidered clothing. Notice the reflective quality of the fabric their clothing is made of. That’s not an artificial fabric – that’s hand-woven cloth dyed in indigo. After dying the cloth, the women put an egg coating on it and then beat the cloth with a wooden hammer until it takes on that reflective quality.

(sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miao_people and www.contemporarynomad.com/the-baisha-miao/)