Abstract: This paper reviews the physical characters of modern Shui people who live in Libo of Qiannan in Guizhou Province. Previous researches of their physical and genetic characters have shown that they have coherent characteristics and a single origin, however no scholar has put forward an opinion of the differences among the Shui peoples. The results of our work show that there are some unified physical traits shared between the Shui of Libo and Sandu, but we have also found that there are some obvious differences between these two Shui groups. The Shui of Libo show some characters that normally distribute in the Northern and Southern Groups of China at the same time. Therefore the authors believe that we can not apply the " single origin" hypothesis and the concept of " special natural adaptive of environment" to explain this phenomenon. We put forward a new hypothesis that is that "the Shui are composed by different groups that have obvious differences in physical characters. " The results also support the opinion that there is a gradation between the features of the Northern and Southern Groups of China. The Shui peoples perhaps represent this gradation.

Key words: Libo; Modern Shui; Physical characters; Adaptive characters; Gradation