To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of People's Republic ofChina, a photo show entitled “The Joy Happy Family - the journey that 56 Chinese ethnic groups have gone through over past years”was held inBeijing.

The photo show was jointly organized by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (CFLAC) and China Photographers Association and supported by China Photo Press, Nationality Pictorial, China Pictorial, and Wangfujing Area Construction and Management Office.

The following photos, selected from the exhibition, are portraits of people of Lahu ethnic group.

The Lahu ethnic minority has a population of 453,705, mainly distributed in the Lancang Lahu Autonomous County in Simao Prefecture, Southern Lincang Prefecture and Menghai County in western Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province. Others live in counties along the Lancang River.

The subtropical hilly areas along the Lancang River where the Lahu people live in compact communities are fertile, suitable for planting rice paddy, dry rice, maize, buckwheat as well as tea, tobacco, and sisal hemp. There are China fir and pine, camphor and nanmu trees in the dense forests, which are the habitat of such animals as red deer, muntjacs, wild oxen, bears, peacocks and parrots. Found here are also valuable medicinal herbs like pseudo-ginseng and devil pepper.

Mineral resources in the area include iron, copper, lead, aluminum, coal, silver, mica and tungsten.

The Lahu language belongs to the Chinese-Tibetan language family. Most of the Lahus also speak Chinese and the language of the Dais. In the past the custom of passing messages by wood-carving was prevalent. In some parts the alphabetic script invented by Western priests was in use. After liberation, the script was reformed and became their formal written language.