Pumi

The Pumi, whom Chinese records called Xifan or Baju, are a Tibeto-Burman highland people spread across southwest Sichuan and northwest Yunnan. They trace their descent to ancient Di-Qiang nomads of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau; pressed by the Qin state, some moved south of the Qionglai ranges before the common era.

In the thirteenth century Pumi groups followed the Mongol armies of Kublai on the 1253 campaign against Dali and settled in northwest Yunnan, exchanging herding for farming.

They speak Prinmi, a Qiangic Tibeto-Burman language without a true script, though Hangui priests kept ritual pictographs and briefly wrote the language in Tibetan letters. Their religion joins the old Dingba ancestor and mountain-god cult to Gelugpa and Kagyu Tibetan Buddhism, while villages around Yongning share the matrilineal Azhu family system of their Mosuo neighbours.