The majority of the Tày practices "Then", an indigenous religion involving the worship of tutelary gods, gods of the natural environment, and ancestors and progenitors of human groups. The patterns of this religion are inherited from Taoism and the Chinese folk religion: the god of the universe is the Jade Emperor, in some local traditions (for example in the Quảng Hoà district of Cao Bằng) also identified as the Yellow Emperor ("Hoàng Đế"). For their religious ceremonies they used to be able to recite Chinese characters but now along with the characters they use glosses because many of them can't recite anymore due to the fact that Vietnamese schools don't teach Chinese characters.