1. Costumes

The costumes of Huayuan Miao men include cloth handkerchiefs on their heads, flower handkerchiefs in the Yayou area, and green handkerchiefs in other areas. The handkerchiefs are 1-3 meters long and worn Multi-layered "herringbone". Wearing a double-breasted jacket with long and small sleeves, short and large trousers, and cyan foot binding. Most of the clothing materials are self-woven "home-made clothes" and the colors are painstakingly decorated with patterns, all green, all blue, etc. The pattern clothing is the most distinctive. The clothes of Miao women are more complex, and the color of the headband is similar to that of men, but the wrapping method is the same. It is mostly folded and extends from the forehead to the back of the head. It is smaller at the bottom and larger at the top, forming an oblate shape, like the bun of an ancient official woman. Women in Yayou area like to wrap flower handkerchiefs, and the wrapping methods are different, with layers on top of each other, like Eguan Qiuju. Women's clothes are all full-breasted, with large and long waists, large and short sleeves, and no collars. The trousers are short and large, and the waist is tied with an apron. The chest, cuffs, apron, and trouser legs are customarily piped, embroidered or arranged with yarn, and railings are added in between. They are colorful and dazzling.

2. Diet

The Miao people in most areas have rice as their staple food for three meals a day. Fried food is the most common fried food. If you add some fresh meat and sauerkraut as filling, the taste will be more delicious. Meat mostly comes from livestock and poultry breeding. The Miao people in Sichuan, Yunnan and other places like to eat dog meat. There is a saying that "the dogs of the Miao people are the wine of the Yi people". In addition to animal oil, the edible oils of the Miao family are mostly camellia oil and vegetable oil. Chili is used as the main condiment. In some areas, there is even a saying that "no dish is complete without spicy food". The Miao people have a wide variety of dishes. Common vegetables include beans, melons, green vegetables, and radishes. Most of the Miao people are good at making soy products. The Miao people in various places generally like to eat sour dishes, and sour soup is a must-have in every household. Sour soup is made from rice soup or tofu water. After fermentation in an earthen pot for 3-5 days, it can be used to cook meat, fish, and vegetables. The Miao people generally use the pickling method to preserve their food. Vegetables, chickens, ducks, fish, and meat all like to be pickled to make them sour. Almost every household of the Miao people has a jar for pickling food, collectively called a sour jar. The Miao people have a long history of brewing wine and have a complete set of techniques from making koji, fermentation, distillation, blending and cellaring. Camellia oleifera is the most common daily beverage. The Miao people in western Hunan also make a special kind of Wanhua tea. Sour soup is also a common drink. Typical foods mainly include: blood soup, chili bone, Miaoxiang turtle and phoenix soup, cotton cake, insect tea, Wanhua tea, pounded fish, fish in sour soup, etc.

3. Taboo

When visiting a Miao family, remember not to eat chicken heads. Guests are generally not allowed to serve chicken livers, offal, and drumsticks. Chicken gallbladders and offal are reserved for elderly women, while chicken drumsticks are reserved for children. When you leave the Miao host's house, you must politely say "Wow Zhou", which means "thank you", and thank the Miao family for their hospitality. In some Miao areas, it is forbidden to wash drinking bowls, rice bags, and rice bowls at any time. They can only wash them when eating new rice to show that the old rice is getting rid of the old rice and the new rice is welcomed. Washing at any time will wash away the wealth of the family, and there will not be enough food to eat. When drinking raw water on the mountain, avoid drinking it directly. You must first put a grass mark to show that you will kill the sick and ghosts. Avoid touching other people's clothes left on the roadside to avoid spreading leprosy. It is forbidden for children to play with small bows and arrows at home, for fear of hitting their ancestors. Avoid crossing the child's head, otherwise the child will not grow taller. It is forbidden for women to sit on the same bench as their elders. It is forbidden to kill dogs, beat them, or eat dog meat; you are not allowed to sit on the place where the ancestors of the Miao family sit, and you cannot step on the tripod on the fire bed with your feet; you are not allowed to whistle at home or at night; you are not allowed to eat the ashes of the roasted glutinous rice rake; when playing, Don't tie up seedlings with family members; don't enter the house when there are straw hats or tree branches hanging on the door or on weddings and funerals; don't walk through the newlyweds when you meet them on the road, etc.

4. Marriage Customs

The Miao people are monogamous, and young men and women have traditional social activities before marriage. For example, "Meeting Girls" is a way for Miao young people to fall in love freely. The traditional festival of the Miao people is the annual Huashan Festival (held on the fifth day of the first lunar month, also known as "Stepping on the Flower Mountain"). This is the most popular festival for the Miao people. During the festival, young men and women dressed in festive costumes gather to sing antiphons and perform step-stepping. Drums, lion dance and Lusheng dance are very lively. Glutinous rice is also an indispensable food in the marriage and love process of young men and women. The Miao people in Chengbu, Hunan, give each other glutinous rice cakes with pictures of mandarin ducks as tokens. During a wedding, the bride and groom drink cups of wine, and the officiant invites the bride and groom to eat glutinous rice cakes with pictures of dragons, phoenixes and dolls.

5. Architecture

Due to long-term dispersed living, different regions have their own characteristics. Most of the houses are wooden structures with roofs of tiles, cedar bark or thatch. In central Guizhou or The Qianxi area is covered with thin stone slabs. In mountainous areas, there are mostly stilted buildings; in places such as Hainan Island and Zhaotong, Yunnan, people live in long thatched houses or "fork houses" made of crossed tree trunks; in the area in western Hunan, they live in stone houses. Most of the Miao people live in mountainous areas. Their houses mostly use tree fences as walls, peeled bark as walls, and weaving as tiles, or they use people to make walls and bamboo or wood chips to make tiles. The interior is divided into bedrooms, kitchens and livestock stables, and the furnishings are simple. Some Miao people live in the dam area, and their houses also have tile-roofed houses with a water and soil structure. They are divided into three rooms. The left and right rooms are each equipped with a door on one side, and the middle room is equipped with a main door, which is the main entrance. In some Miao ethnic groups, the main entrance is generally not allowed to be entered or exited casually. Only when there are weddings, funerals, or sacrificial events at home, can the main entrance be used.