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Yi People: Bimo Priests, an Old Script and Three Colours

Customs
Oct 14, 2026
Yi lacquer wine set with red, black and yellow painted cups on a round tray and a lidded wine pot behind

The Yi people are easy to hear about and surprisingly hard to pin down. Most visitors meet them through a festival: the bonfires of the Torch Festival, or a ring dance in a Yunnan square. Behind that sits a much older world. There is a script of their own, a class of priests who still read it, a habit of settling arguments in verse, and a palette of black, red and yellow that turns up on everything from soup bowls to armour. So this guide is a key to that world. It covers who the Yi are, how their writing and ritual work, what the three colours mean, and where a traveller can actually meet the culture in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou.

Who the Yi People Are

The Yi (彝族, Yizu) are one of China’s officially recognised ethnic groups, and one of the largest. China’s 2020 census counted 9,830,327 of them (Wikipedia, 2026a). About half live in Yunnan, roughly a third in Sichuan, and close to a tenth in Guizhou. Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, in southern Sichuan, holds the biggest single community — around two million people — and its capital Xichang is the usual way in. For how the groups fit together, see our overview of ethnic groups in China.

The Yi do not stop at the border, either. Across the frontier in northern Vietnam live the Lô Lô, a small related community of a few thousand people in Hà Giang, Cao Bằng and Lào Cai provinces (Wikipedia, 2026a).

One name, many peoples

Here is the part that confuses people. “Yi” is an umbrella, a bit like “Celtic”. Under it sit communities who call themselves by different names and speak languages their neighbours may not follow. China recognises six Yi languages, and they are not mutually intelligible (Wikipedia, 2026a). Linguists usually list them as follows (Wikipedia, 2026b):

  • Nuosu (Northern Yi) — the largest, with about two million speakers, mostly in Liangshan. Standard written Yi is based on it.
  • Nasu (Eastern Yi), Lolopo (Central Yi) and Lalo (Western Yi) — spread across Yunnan and western Guizhou.
  • Nisu (Southern Yi) — the people behind the soaring haicaiqiang songs of Shiping.
  • Sani (Southeastern Yi) — the Yi of the Stone Forest, and of the Ashima legend.

So a Nuosu herder in the Liangshan hills and a Sani guide at Shilin are both Yi. Even so, they may share Mandarin more easily than they share a Yi language. Keep that in mind, because almost everything below varies by branch.

The Yi Script: How the Yi People Write

Very few of China’s minorities have a writing system that is both old and their own. The Yi do. Their classical script is logographic, with signs for words and syllables, and it was long the preserve of priests (Wikipedia, 2026c). The oldest dated example is a bronze bell inscription from 1485, although tradition places the script’s invention much earlier, in the Tang dynasty. Regional variation is huge. One count puts the known glyph variants at around 90,000, with about forty ways to write “stomach” alone.

The modern syllabary

In 1974, authorities in Sichuan standardised the Liangshan form into a syllabary: one sign per syllable. China’s State Council ratified it in 1980 as the official script for the Nuosu language (Wikipedia, 2026c). It has 756 basic signs, plus 63 more for syllables in Chinese loanwords. Counting the tonal forms, it covers 1,164 syllables, and all of them sit in Unicode, so the script works on phones and computers. It was built for Nuosu, though, so Yi from other branches do not necessarily read it.

What does that mean for a visitor? In Xichang and the Liangshan county towns, shop fronts and street signs often carry a line of Yi script beside the Chinese. It looks a little like a row of small, angular knots. Once you have noticed it, you will keep seeing it.

Bimo, Debate and the Spoken Word of the Yi People

The script survived mainly because of the bimo. A bimo is a hereditary ritual specialist, a priest and scholar in one, who reads the old books and leads ceremonies. The faith around them is often called Bimoism, a native Yi religion usually described as a form of shamanism (Wikipedia, 2026a). Ancestors and spirits sit at its centre. Still, it is not the whole picture: some Yi in Yunnan follow Buddhism, and many converted to Christianity in the 20th century, so the mix varies a lot by region.

Bimo chant

Bimo do not simply read. They chant. Bimo music joined China’s national heritage list in 2014, with Meigu county in Liangshan as its home (China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network [ihchina], n.d.-a). The chants cover creation myths, migrations, genealogies and moral teaching. There are more than twenty named tunes, from ancestor praise to soul-calling, mostly in lines of five or seven syllables. Each bimo learns them by ear from a teacher. Bimo painting, the illustrations in their ritual books, was listed the same year (ihchina, n.d.-b).

Kezhi: winning an argument in verse

Now for the tradition that tends to delight outsiders. Kezhi is a formal verbal duel. At weddings, funerals and festivals, a speaker from each side trades improvised verse, in rhyme and metaphor, until one side runs out of answers (ihchina, n.d.-c). Topics range across history, astronomy, farming and ethics. It was listed as national heritage in 2008, again with Meigu as the stronghold. The listing also admits it is fading fast.

The closest Western comparison might be Scottish flyting, the old poetic insult contest. A modern rap battle is not far off either. The difference is the stakes. Kezhi is about honour between families, so a good speaker carries real social weight.

Black, Red and Yellow: The Colours of the Yi People

If one visual idea ties the Yi together, it is three colours. Black, red and yellow appear on lacquer, on embroidery, on festival dress. Chuxiong’s heritage listing speaks directly of a Yi “worship” of red, yellow and black (ihchina, n.d.-d). Interpretations differ, so treat any single meaning with some care. One common reading in Liangshan links black to dignity, red to courage and fire, and yellow to light and the future.

Lacquerware from Xide

Xide county, in central-northern Liangshan, calls itself the home of Yi lacquer, with a craft history put at more than 1,700 years (ihchina, n.d.-e). Craftsmen turn rhododendron and other hardwoods into bowls, cups, spoons and wine vessels. Then they coat them in natural lacquer, coloured with cinnabar red and mineral yellow. The work takes more than forty steps. The pattern almost always starts with a black ground, with red and yellow painted on top. In Yiluo village, one family, the Jiwu, has passed the craft down for nineteen generations.

Yi lacquer joined the national list in 2008, with two centres: Xide in Sichuan and Dafang in western Guizhou (ihchina, n.d.-e). Historically the same technique covered leather armour and bimo ritual tools as well as tableware. For a traveller, a lacquer bowl or a set of cups is one of the most genuine souvenirs of the region — light, tough and very Yi.

What Yi people wear

Dress is the other big canvas, and it changes from valley to valley. In Liangshan, look for these (Sichuan Department of Culture and Tourism, 2022):

  • The tianpusa — a lock of hair some older men keep at the crown of the head. It stands for a man’s dignity and is regarded as sacred, so never touch it.
  • The hero knot — a dark cloth turban twisted into a long horn over the forehead. Young men wear it tall and slim; older men wear it rounder.
  • The wala (charva) — a heavy woollen cape with a long fringe. It can take months to make, and in the villages it is a coat by day and a blanket by night.
  • Pleated skirts — women’s skirts built from many bands of coloured cloth, often reaching the ground.

Zhaojue county calls itself the hometown of Yi dress, and local men’s trouser width alone signals which of three Liangshan dialect areas a person comes from (ihchina, n.d.-f). Chuxiong, in Yunnan, is a different world again. Its listing describes more than forty styles, rich embroidery, and motifs such as the tiger and the red mayinghua rhododendron (ihchina, n.d.-d).

Festivals and Food of the Yi People

The Yi calendar has two great peaks, and they could not feel more different.

  • The Torch Festival — midsummer, on the 24th day of the sixth lunar month. Loud, public and fiery. Our guide to the China Torch Festival covers the legends, the dates and the crowds.
  • Yi New Year (Kushi) — late autumn, on an auspicious day chosen around 20 November, after the harvest (ihchina, n.d.-g). It is a family festival: ancestor offerings, a slaughtered pig, visits between relatives. Liangshan treats it as a public holiday, but the prefecture announces the exact dates each year, so check before you plan.

Music runs through both, of course. For where to hear the songs and join the circle dances, see our guide to Yi song and dance.

At the Yi table

Mountain food, simply put. The famous dish is tuotuorou, fist-sized chunks of boiled pork from young pigs, seasoned with local herbs (Wikipedia, 2026d). It usually comes with buckwheat pancakes, garlic soup and unpeeled boiled potatoes. Traditionally it is served in lacquer bowls and eaten with long-handled wooden spoons rather than chopsticks. Buckwheat, in fact, is everywhere: pancakes, noodles, a slightly bitter tea. Expect drink to be offered too, and generously.

Where to Meet the Yi People

  • Liangshan, Sichuan — the heartland. Xichang for the Torch Festival, Zhaojue for dress, Meigu for bimo culture, Xide for lacquer. Our Sichuan travel guide covers the routes south from Chengdu.
  • The Stone Forest, Yunnan — Shilin is a Yi autonomous county, and Sani guides tell the Ashima story among the rocks. See our guide to the Yunnan Stone Forest, an easy trip from Kunming.
  • Chuxiong, Yunnan — the other Yi autonomous prefecture, west of Kunming, known for embroidery and the left-foot dance.
  • Southern Dali — Weishan and Nanjian, where Yi villages keep the dage circle dance alive. Our guide to Dali folk songs explains it.
  • Western Guizhou — Bijie and Dafang, the second home of Yi lacquer. Our Guizhou travel guide has the wider picture.

Beyond these, Yi villages appear across most of Yunnan, often right next to Hani, Bai or Naxi neighbours. If you have read our guide to the Naxi people, you will find the two share the Torch Festival and plenty of mountain history.

Etiquette Among the Yi People

  • Ask before photographing a bimo ritual, a funeral or a New Year rite.
  • Do not touch anyone’s head, and especially not a man’s tianpusa.
  • Accept food and drink with both hands. Sipping is fine; nobody needs you to finish the bowl.
  • Treat bimo books and ritual tools as sacred objects, not props.
  • Buy lacquer and embroidery from the makers where you can.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Where do most Yi people live? In southwest China: about half in Yunnan, a third in Sichuan and a tenth in Guizhou. Liangshan Prefecture in Sichuan has the largest single community.
  2. Do the Yi people have their own writing? Yes. The classical script is centuries old, and Liangshan uses a standard syllabary, official since 1980 and supported in Unicode.
  3. What is a bimo? A Yi ritual specialist who reads the old script, chants scriptures, and leads ceremonies such as ancestor offerings and funerals.
  4. When is the best time to visit? Torch Festival week in summer for spectacle. Late autumn for Yi New Year, though that is a family occasion and depends on an invitation.
  5. What is kezhi? A formal Yi verbal duel. At weddings, funerals and festivals, speakers from each side trade improvised verse until one runs out of answers. Meigu county in Liangshan keeps it best.

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