The origin of the Dai ethnic family goes back to the ancient Baiyue (alternatively, Bai Yue, or Hundred Yue) people, a tribe of ancient ethnic groups. The term "Yue" has historically been used in a broad-stroke manner by the ancient Chinese to refer to any number of larger to smaller ethnic groups that do not necessarily belong in the same ethnic "circle", much like the ancient Greeks used the term "Keltai" (corresponding to the present-day English-language term "Celt") to refer, in broad-brush strokes, to certain peoples of present-day Europe, stretching from France through Germany and on to the British Isles.

The Baiyue include the Dong, though this group insists that it is a separate ethnic entity. In fact, scholars believe that the original Yue folk who branched out along a northerly route that would lead them into present-day China (a similar group, forebears of the present-day Tai (alternatively "Thai") folk of Thailand, branched southward) are in fact forebears to the Han Chinese - indeed, the Cantonese language is also called the Yue language (to read more about this interesting migration theory, which relates the Dong, the Yue, and the ancestors of the Han together, click here).

The earliest Dai peoples of China were separated into three different groups, corresponding to three kingdoms: the Mong Loong Kingdom (Kingdom of Uncle), situated in the southern Yellow River region; the Mong Pa Kingdom (Kingdom of Auntie), in present-day Sichuan Province; and the Mong Yio Kingdom (Kingdom of the Yue/ Yi peoples), east of the Yangtze River.

With plentiful rainfall and fertile land, the areas that these three Dai groups inhabited was quasi-subtropical, and thus suitable for the planting of Dai crops that today would be called cash crops. According to ancient Chinese documents, the Dai had a fairly well-developed system of agriculture, and a part of their crops were sold for other commodities. The Dai are believed by scholars to be one of the first ethnic groups to employ oxen to till the land.

The forebears of the present-day Dai Ethnic Minority of China first organized themselves into a semi-unified political organization - the "Shan Guo" - during the Qin (221-207 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) Dynasties period. In 109 BC, Emperor Wu Di of the Western Han (206 BC-AD 009) Dynasty set up the prefecture of Yizhou (alternatively Yi Zhou, "Yi" being a variant of "Yue", and "Zhou" (alternatively "Zhao") meaning state, or prefecture) as a special area to house the Yue people in southwestern China, corresponding to present-day Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces.

In subsequent years the Dai of Yizhou Prefecture sent emissaries bearing tributes to the Han court in Luoyang in appreciation of the recognition shown them by the Chinese emperor. Included in the entourage were Dai musicians and acrobats whose performance at the Han court won the Dai people great praise; these emissaries, or "Dai ambassadors", received gold seals from the emperor while their leader was given the title of "Great Captain." In the years that followed, the Dai people would be officially affiliated with the Han Dynasty, receiving recognition and protection from Han rulers in exchange for their loyalty to the emperor.

Over the years the resourceful Dai further multiplied and split into smaller groups, or tribes. From the 8th to the 12th century, the Dai of the Dehong region had lived under their own separate, semi-autonomous rule - but within the confines of Imperial China, of course - in the Meng Mao Kingdom whose capital was Ruilijiang.

But in the 12th century, a Dai chieftain named Pa Ya Zhen unified all of the Dai tribes and established a local kingdom, albeit, still within the confines of Imperial China, called Mengle, with Jinghong in present-day Yunnan Province as its capital.

During the Yuan (1271-1368) Dynasty, the Dai homelands were subordinated to Yunnan Province, and the feudal system of appointing hereditary headmen from among the ethnic minorities - including from among the Dai - was instituted, which was a step backward compared to the more progressive organizational system of the previous, principally Han Chinese, dynasties, and it was surely a form of cultural appeasement towards ethnic minorities with whom the Yuan Dynasty had its share of problems.

However, this neo-feudal system continued, not only with respect to the Dai, but with respect to the bulk of China's ethnic minorities, on through the Ming (1368-1644) and the Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties, except for small enclaves of minority groups that lived within the confines of the more advanced Han Chinese areas; these latter enclaves of Dai folk were subject to the same administrative rule as the surrounding mainstream Chinese society.

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the new republic, under the rule of the Nationalist Party - which feared a civil-war-like break-up of the country (and which may even have feared defeat at the hands of some of these minority groups, not least the Mongolians) - set up a special administrative entity, a county, in the Dai homelands, and a policy of oppression was thereafter pursued throughout the reaches of the county's administration.

After the formation of the People's Republic of China, the Dai area that had been under strict Kuomintang rule was "liberated" (1950). In subsequent years, in particular between 1954 and 1985, upwards of 90 percent of the Dai people would come to live in areas which had been granted autonomous administration within the PRC.

Chinatravel