The population is about 9.426 million. The majority live in provinces such as Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei and Hainan. Their habitation areas vary in scale, and some of them live together with other ethnic groups. The Miao language used by Miao people belongs to the Miao-Yao branch of Miao-Yao languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The language is divided into three dialects: Xiangxi, Qiandong and Chuandianqian. There are still sub-divisions under these dialects. The Miao people living in multi-ethnic areas can speak Chinese, the Dong language or the Zhuang language. In the past, the Miao people did not have a unified writing system. In 1956, the phonograms using Latin alphabets were created or reformed for four dialects. The Miao people are mainly engaged in agricultural production, mainly growing rice and corns, as well as cash crops like Tung oil trees and oilseed rapes as well as expensive medicinal herbs such as panax notoginseng, rhizoma gastrodiae and tu-chung. The Miao people have colourful and diverse clothing, diet, architecture, festivals and etiquette culture. There is a variety of Miao festivals and the Miao people living in different areas also have distinctive festive traditions. The traditional festivals include “Miao New Year”, “the 8th day of the fourth lunar month”, “Dragon Boat Festival”, “Flower Mountain Festival”, “New Rice Festival”, “Ching Ming Festival”, “Ganqiu Festival”, etc.