The Yao people (simplified Chinese: 瑶族; traditional Chinese: 瑤族; pinyin: Yáozú) or Dao (Vietnamese: người Dao) is a classification for various ethnic minorities in China and Vietnam. Their majority branch is also known as Mien. They originated in the areas around Changsha, which today is the capital of Hunan province. They speak a branch of the Hmong-Mien family of languages and share a strong genetic connection to the Hmong peoples. They are believed to have diverged from the Hmong around 5,800 years ago.
They are one of the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups in China and reside in the mountainous southwest and south of the country. They also form one of the 54 ethnic groups officially recognized by Vietnam. They numbered 3,309,341 in the 2020 Chinese census and 891,151 in the 2019 Vietnamese census. An estimated 60,000 Yao of the Iu Mien branch reside in the United States, mostly in the Western coastal states.
