Lisu

The Lisu, a mountain people of northwestern Yunnan and the Salween valley, hold a simple animism: sacrifices go to the spirits of the mountains, and shamans perform the main rituals. At the top of each village lies a sacred grove where the sky spirit, called the Old Grandfather Spirit in China, is given offerings, and each house keeps an ancestor altar at the back.

The main festival falls at the new year, and new wine is brewed at harvest. The knife-ladder festival of the eighth day of the second lunar month recalls the Lisu soldiers who, under the Ming emperor Zhengtong, climbed ladders of blades and leapt through fire against the Luchuan chieftain.