Of this group of people, among whom may be named the Yao, Yao Yin, Lanten, Meo, Musur (or Muhso) and Kaw, perhaps the best known and most like the Lao are the Lu - both names meaning originally "man" - who have in many cases adopted a form of Buddhism (flavoured strongly by their natural respect for local spirits as well as tattooing) and other relatively civilized customs, and have forsaken their wandering life among the hills for a more settled village existence.
Taking the renowned yao-pien-yao, or transmutation ware of China as a model, the Takatori potters endeavoured, by skilful mixing of coloring materials, to reproduce the wonderful effects of oxidization seen in the Chinese ware.
As for faience and pottery, howeverr the Chinese despised them in all forms, with one notable exception, the yi-hsing-yao, known in the Occident as boccaro.
Even the yi-hsing-yao, too, owed much of its popularity to special utility.
So, too, the blue-and-white porcelain of Hirado, though assisted by exceptional tenderness of sous-pdte color, by milk-white glaze, by great beauty of decorative design, and often by an admirable use of the modelling or graving tool, represents a ceramic achievement palpably below the soft paste kai-pien-yao of King-te-chen.
In the eyes of a Chinese connoisseur, no blue-and-white porcelain worthy of consideration exists, or ever has existed, except the kai-pien-yao, with its imponderable pdle, its wax-like surface, and its rich, glowing blue, entirely free from superficiality or garishness and broken into a thousand tints by the microscopic crackle of the glaze.
There remains, too, a wide domain in which the Chinese developed high skill, whereas the Japanese can scarcely be said to have entered it at all; namely, the domain of monochromes and polychromes, striking every note of color from the richest to the most delicate; the domain of truit and fiamb glazes, of yO-pien-yao (transmutation ware), and of egg-shell with incised or translucid decoration.
It cannot be said, indeed, that his cladon shows the velvety richness of surface and tenderness of color that distinguished the old Kuang-yao and Lungchuan-yao of China, or that he has ever essayed the moss-edged crackle of the beautiful Ko-yao.
As for his ivory-white, it distinctly surpasses the Chinese Ming Chen-yao in every quality except an indescribable intimacy of glaze and p&e which probably can never be obtained by either Japanese or European methods.
Aim being to rival the Sung Chien-yao, with its glaze Tokyo of mirror-black or ravenii-wing green, and its leveret era in s S.
From the time of the emperor Yao, upwards of 2000 years B.C., the Chinese had two different years, - a civil year, which was regulated by the moon, and an astronomical year, which was solar.
The mathematical tribunal has, however, from time immemorial counted the first year of the first cycle from the eighty-first of Yao, that is to say, from the year 2277 B.C.
Other tribes, whose presence is probably owing to immigration at remote or recent periods, are the Karens of the western frontier range, the Lu, Yao, Yao Yin, Meo and Musur of northern Siam.
This is known from the orders promulgated by the emperor Yao about 2300 B.C., as recorded in the Shu Chung, a collection of do'.uments antique in the time of Confucius (550-478 B.C.).
And Yao was merely the renovator of a system long previously established.
Under Burmese rule Lashio was also the centre of authority for the northern Shan States, but the Burmese post in the valley was close to the Nam Yao, in an old Chinese fortified camp. The Lashio valley was formerly very populous; but a rebellion, started by the sawbwa of Hsenwi, about ten years before the British occupation, ruined it, and it is only slowly approaching the prosperity it formerly enjoyed; pop. (1901) 2565.
