There are a lot of Dao people living in Sapa, Vietnam.Dao people groups have alot of customs which spealize their characteristics.
Eating customs
Dao people have two main meals a day-lunch and dinner. Breakfast is eaten only during the busy harvesting season. The Dao eat mostly rice. However, in some places,people eat corn or soup instead of rice. Popular rice meal is made of wood and bamboo. Mortars are divided into several types, such as pillar-shaped mortars or water sprout mortars, with rice-pounding pestles controlled by hands or feet or by water power. The Dao prefer boiled meat, dried or sour mixed meat and sour bamboo shoot soup. When eating is finished, the Dao have a tradition that they never put down the chopsticks on the bowl because it signifies that there is a death in the family. Dao people usually drink distilled alcohol. In some places, they drink a kind of local wine, having a slightly sour and hot taste. Dao people smoke cigarettes or locally grown tobacco with pipes.
Clothing customs
In the past, men had long hair with chignon or top tuft, with the rest shaved smoothly. Different groups have different types of head-scarves and ways of wearing them. They wear short or long shirts.
Dao women’s clothes are diverse. They usually wear a long blouse with a dress or trousers. Their clothes are colorfully embroidered. When embroidering, they create designs based on their memories. They embroider on one side of the cloth so that the design is seen on the other side. They have several designs such as the letter “van”, the pine tree, animals, birds, humans, and leaves. Their method of creating batik garment is unique. They put the batik stylus or pen into hot bee’s wax and then draw the design onto the cloth. The portion of the cloth receiving the waxed patterns resists the indigo blue dyeing a cloth of beautiful blue and white patterns.
Housingcustoms
Many Dao communities are found about half-way up most of the northern mountainous regions in Vietnam. However, there are several Dao groups that live in valleys, such as the Dao Quan Trang (white trousers), as well as high-mountain dwellers like the Dao Do (Red Dao). Wards and houses are scattered around. There are a variety of architectural styles, as some Dao build their houses directly on the ground while others build them on stilts. Some Dao houses combine both these elements.
Transportation
Dao people in highland areas use black baskets with two straps to transport goods and produce. Those living in the lower elevantor carry goods with a pair of containers suspended on each end of a carrying pole that rests on the shoulders. Cotton bags or net bags or net back-packs are preferred here.
Social organization
Village relationships are essentially regulated by parentage or by being neighbors. The Dao people have many family surnames, the most popular being Ban, Trieu. Each lineage or each branch possesses its own genealogical register and a system of different middle names to distinguishpeople of different generations.
Source : http://sapabeauty.com/2935/dao-people-customs-part-1/
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