Huangluo: Long-Hair Village Where Women Don’t Cut Their Hair – A 2,000-Year-Old Tradition Of The Yao People

Ellen Lloyd - AncientPages.com - Huangluo is a small community located deep in the mountains of southern China’s Guangxi province.

In this Chinese settlement, known as “Long Hair Village” women cut their hair only once in their lives and as a result of this, they grow their black hair up to 2.1 meters (6.8 feet) long.

Hair Is Considered Sacred

Female members of the Yao ethnic tribe have persevered a 2,000-year-old tradition according to which hair is considered sacred and the most prized possession.

According to the Yao peoples’ beliefs growing long hair brings longevity, wealth and good fortune. These women cut their hair only once in their lives, on their 18^th birthday, as part of a coming of age ceremony. The young girl’s hair is persevered and later given as a gift to her husband.

Until recently, no one was allowed even so much as to look at a woman’s loose locks except her husband and children. If a man saw an unmarried woman’s hair, he had to spend three years the woman’s family as their son-in-law, but this rule was abandoned in the late 1980s.

There are about a couple of hundred people living in the village and 60 of them are women, who earn money by showing their hair to tourists. The remote village was once one of the poorest in the province, but thanks to tourists these people can now enjoy a better living. Different hairstyles represent the different social status of the bearer. Females are known as the Red Yao Women because of their red embroidered dress.

The women in Huanglou do not use shampoo of any kind. They wash their hair using glutinous rice and water from the nearby river and that’s has no negative on their hair. On the contrary, their hair is shiny, smooth, healthy and most of the women do not have a single grey hair until well past the age of 80.

The world's longest documented hair belongs to Xie Qiuping which measured 18 feet and 5.54 inches in May 2004. This tribe's tradition has earned them a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's first long hair village.

The history of the Yao people can be traced to 221 to 207 BC, during the Qin Dynasty. At present, there are about 2.6 million ethnic Yao people living in different provinces, some also live abroad.

Written by Ellen Lloyd – AncientPages.com

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