Among China's Yi, weather is said to change within a few miles
Nearly all of China's nine million Yi live in mountains, often farming steep slopes far from any city. Altitude varies so sharply across their lands that an old saying holds that the weather is different a few miles away, and Yi communities earn their living in completely different ways from valley to valley.
The Yi are the sixth largest of the 55 minority groups recognised by Beijing. More than 4.5 million live in Yunnan, about 2.5 million in southern Sichuan and a million in northwest Guizhou; the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture alone holds two million. They speak several Loloish languages related to Burmese, some mutually unintelligible, and the prestige variety, Nuosu, has its own script. Groups call themselves Nisu, Sani, Axi, Lolo and more, and the state bundled them into one ethnicity.
Names carry history. Many self-names derive from Ni with the suffix su, meaning people, and the Chinese name Yi probably grew from Ni too. Lolo is tied to tiger worship, since lo means tiger in their dialects. The Chinese written form of Luoluo originally carried a dog radical, a written insult, and reforms swapped the character twice; one linguist remarked that the name was offensive only when written with the dog.
Yi legend says all life began in water created by melting snow, which dripped down to form a being called the Ni, mother of every living thing. A common ancestor, Apu Dumu, had three wives and six sons who spread out from present-day Zhaotong to found six clans. Because older brothers traditionally treated younger ones almost as slaves, younger sons kept leaving to carve out domains of their own, driving centuries of migration. Several Yi branches became kingdoms that the Tang dynasty recognised in 846 and 847 as a buffer against Nanzhao.
Later empires tightened their grip. From the Ming dynasty, policies replaced local chiefs with imperial officials, splintering Yi territory into isolated communities. Under the Qing, Yi near Kunming were forced to give up cremation for burial, sparking rebellions that were crushed. In the twentieth century a Yi general, Long Yun, governed Yunnan, and many Yi joined communist forces during the Long March.
Source: Yi people
