Naxi Minority
Naxi people mainly live in concentrated communities of Lijiang Naxi Autonomous County of Yunnan Province. There are still a proportion residing in Weixi, Zhongdian, Ninglang, and Deqin in Yunnan, Yanbian, Yanyuan, and Muli of Sichuan, as well as Zhikang in Xizang. Naxi people used to be a branch of Guqiang people in Northwest China, and they migrated to Lijiang area in about third century BC and settled down.
Naxi people speak Naxi language which is a branch of Cambodian of Sino-Tibetan language system. It comprises of two dialects in the east and west. With Jinsha River as the water shed, 200,000 in the west can communicate with each other with the same language; the east can be further divided into three parts and each has its local colloquial language. Therefore, communication among Naxi people in the east is more difficult than that in the west.
Over 1000 years ago, Naxi people invented two kinds of primeval pictographs—Dongba Character and Geba Character of pinyin. They were known as the live pictographs which are rare in the world today. Dongba Scriptures written in Dongba characters has about 9000 volumes in China and around 11,000 collected in other countries. In 1957, Naxi people invented the pinyin character diagram based on Latin letters. Now Chinese is the popular language among Naxi people.
Naxi people make a living on agricultural production. They plant various crops, such as rice, corn, potato, wheat, beans, cotton, and hemp, etc. The banks of Jinjiang River are areas of forest with abundant produces of medical materials and special local products. Yulong Mountain District has a variety of plants and is reputed as "Treasury of Plants". Handicraft industry has achieved development recently. Mid and small size corporations on other industries, such as machinery, mining, power generation, chemical fertilizer production, and manufacturing, are growing rapidly.
You may be interested in the following pages:
Bai Nationality | Naxi Nationality | Dai Nationality | Miao Nationality | Dong Nationality | Zhuang Nationality | Yao Nationality | Uygur Nationality | Hui Nationality | Tibetan Nationality
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