Bai

The Bai are people of the Erhai basin in northwest Yunnan, among the southwest's oldest settled peoples and China's most sinicized minorities. Chinese texts called them Bo or Bai from the Tang, Minjia from the fourteenth century. They backed the Nanzhao kingdom of 649 to 902; in 937 Bai chieftain Duan Siping founded Dali, three centuries of stable rule under a court steeped in Chinese letters and Buddhism.

After the Mongols took Dali in 1253 the Yuan kept Duan as governors; in 1337 Taihe and Heqing valleys were still run by the old house under supervision. The 1381 Ming conquest ended this: the last Duan was deposed and Dali became a prefecture, Han soldiers and farmers pouring in, deepening sinicization.

Bai language, heavy with Chinese loanwords, remains Tibeto-Burman; Bai life kept its marks: white dress, tie-dyed cloth, cormorant fishing on Erhai and grey-brick Dali courtyards.