Dai Restaurant presents Chinese Ethnic Dances along with the identical flavored dishes and ethnic rice wines.

China is a large country noted for its dense population and vast territory. There are 55 minority ethnic groups in addition to the Han who represent 92% of the population. The defining elements of an ethnic group are language, homeland, and social values. 53 minority ethnic groups use spoken languages of their own; 23 minority ethnic groups have their own written languages.

Most of the 7 percent of the minority ethnic groups live in the vast areas of the West, Southwest and Northwest. The largest is the 12 million-strong Zhuang in southwestern China. Although minority ethnic groups account for about 7% of the population, they are distributed over some 50% of Chinese territory, mostly in the border regions. Equality, unity and common prosperity are the fundamental objectives of the government in handling the relations between minority ethnic groups. China exercises a policy of regional autonomy for various minority ethnic groups, allowing ethnic group peoples living in compact communities to establish self-government and direct their own affairs.

In the forests of southwest China, people sing and dance after transplanting rice seedlings or reaping a bumper harvest. The first one that springs to mind is perhaps the Dai group's elephant-foot-drum dance. Legend has it that in ancient times, two man-eating monsters lived in the region. Later a youth from the Dai ethnic group killed the monsters and used their skins to make these drums. During ceremonies and festivals even today, lads come from far and near for the elephant-foot-drum dance.

There are of course many more dance genres in China. Over the past centuries, most have remained active in their own regions and some have been shown in other areas. They have kept their own distinct characteristics, occasionally borrowing elements from other genres. No wonder people say you need more than one life to see all the dances in China.