Pa Then ethnic group

Pa Then ethnic group

Located in the west of Ha Giang province, Hoang Su Phi is a beautiful region that owes its reputation to the fabulous rice terraces tumbling down from the mountains, to the Tay Con Linh massifs and to the many ethnic minorities fiercely attached to their traditions. Discovering this captivating region, you will have the opportunity to meet the Phu La, Pa Then, Hmong or Dao ethnic groups. Presentation of some of them:

The Pa Then
Established in Ha Giang province for about 200 years, the Pa Then, numbering 6,000, are concentrated mainly in the valleys, on the flanks of low mountains or along streams. The Pa Then live in wooden houses on stilts or partly on the ground and the other on stilts. They worship ancestors at home by paying homage to the spirits of rain, earth and rice culture, and to the souls of their ancestors. This ethnic group, belonging to the Mong-Dao language group, has managed to preserve a rich folk heritage: traditional songs, lullabies, stories, dances and musical instruments.

Traditional clothes are very shimmering. The men wear the shirt, the indigo trousers and a scarf. Women dress in a richly decorated skirt and jacket that comes to magnify a finely embroidered and colorful turban dangling many red and yellow filaments harmoniously framing their small cat face.

The Pa Then live mainly from slash and burn cultivation. Corn and rice are staple foods.

Zays and Co Lao ethnic groups

Zays and Co Lao ethnic groups

The Giay tribes live in the village of Ma Le near Lung Cu in Dong Van district of Ha Giang. It's a small hamlet that contains more interesting things. Ma Le has only about 20 roofs but it concentrates from most of the cultural treats of Giay people. They live happy, peaceful with other ethnicities: Mong, Lo Lo, Chai, Pu Peo ... Despite more generation, identity has not been mixed.

Co Lao

The inhabitants of Co Lao are divided into several groups. The group of Co Lao Do is located in Hoang Su Phi and Yen Minh, where there are many mountains and valleys, cultivating mainly rice fields. Meanwhile, Co Lao Xanh's group and Co Lao Trang are distributed to Dong Van and Meo Vac, living mainly in the base on rock culture in the mountains.

The flowery Hmong

Also known as colorful Hmong, the flowered Hmong are one of the ethnic groups, an Asian people from the mountainous regions of southern China (especially the Guizhou region).


The floral Hmong are distinguished by their colorful costumes with a lot of ingenious motives.

To meet the flowery Hmong and discover their particular way of life, the Hoang Su Phi market is not to be missed during your stay in our ecolodge. Place of lively exchanges of local products, especially a meeting place of the Hmong flowers where many stories of love!

Dzaos ethnic group

Dzaos ethnic group

The Dao

The Dao migrated from South China to Fukien, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces from the 13th to the 20th century, to settle on high ground and live in good neighborhood with other ethnic groups. They live either in villages or scattered in small isolated hamlets, but always choose to settle near a water point, irrespective of their activity, rice growing or slash-and-burn farming. The Dao ethnic group is made up of several local groups: Red Dao, Sappo Dao, Dao Tight Pants, Dao White Trousers, Dao Tunic, Dao Đại Bản, to name a few. It is therefore their costume that will allow you to distinguish them from each other.

Traditionally, Dao women wear pants and a long tunic, black or blue, slit on the front. If the embroidered designs and headdresses differ from one group to another, the Dao usually wear silver or bronze jewelry. The hair is usually raised in a bun on the nape of the neck or shaved around the edge leaving a tuft emerge on the top of the skull. The men's suit, more sober, consists of cotton trousers tinted with indigo, tied at the waist with a wide belt.

The Phu La ethnic group
The Phu La ethnic group is present along the Chinese border and especially in Ha Giang for a hundred years. Sedentary, they settled at mid-slope mountains and live grouped in hamlets alongside the Hmong ethnic group. Their traditional wooden thatched house is built either on the ground or on stilts. The economic life of the Phu La people is based on slash and terraced rice fields. Apart from rice cultivation, the Phu La perpetuate the cultivation of cotton, weaving to satisfy the needs of the family's clothing, breeding (buffaloes to pull the plows, horses for the pack, chickens and pigs for the meat). They also braid rattan and bamboo to make accessories for packaging.

Phu La women usually wear pants, a long open jacket on the front or a short open jacket under an armpit with the square neckline and embroidered on the front. Men are distinguished by a very original costume, with ornaments glasswork back.