A visit to the Miao Village

One Sunday our friend took us with his car to the mountains outside the city. We were going to visit a church in a village where the minority people Miao lived. The Miao people is one of many minory people in China. The biggest group is han Chinese, and those are the ones you might think of, if you're thinking of the typical Chinese. But there are many different people groups in this large country, some of them not even looking like "typical" Chinese, and they all have their own cultures and tradition.
  This people - the Miao people - have a tradition of believing in spirits, but many of them are christians since a long time ago. All Miao groups, though, have a strong tradition of singing. Before they became christians their songs were about everyday life, which means also, of course, that now when being christians it feels naturally to also sing songs about this. Their voices are very strong, because they live in mountain area, and we really felt we were in Heaven, listening to their singing during the church service. The service was three hours long! First everything was said in Mandarin, but in the end a man had to translate everything into the Miao language, because there were those who could only understand that language!





















Two women sitting outside the church, before the service. The Miao women were truly natural beauties. They weared their traditional hair style, their long black hair collected on the top of their head. All of them were also wearing colourful skirts and dresses.


Silence!






This is a page from the Bible, written in the Miao language. The minority languages that are given written letters don't use the traditional Chinese letter-signs, but look more like our Latin letters.











Look very carefully at this picture, so that you don't miss anything!

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