Some Chinese characters used to transcribe non-Chinese peoples were graphically pejorative ethnic slurs, in which the insult derived not from the Chinese word but from the character used to write it. For instance, the Written Chinese transcription of "Yao" "the Yao people", who primarily live in the mountains of southwest China and Vietnam. When 11th-century Song Dynasty authors first transcribed the exonym "Yao", they insultingly chose "yao" 猺 "jackal" from a lexical selection of over 100 characters pronounced "yao" (e.g., 腰 "waist", 遙 "distant", 搖 "shake"). During a series of 20th-century Chinese language reforms, this graphic pejorative (written with the 犭"dog/beast radical") "jackal; the Yao" was replaced twice; first with the invented character "yao" (亻"human radical") "the Yao", then with "yao" (玉 "jade radical") "precious jade; the Yao." Chinese orthography (symbols used to write a language) can provide unique opportunities to write ethnic insults logographically that do not exist alphabetically. For the Yao ethnic group, there is a difference between the transcriptions "Yao" 猺 "jackal" and "Yao" 瑤 "jade" but none between the romanizations "Yao" and "Yau".