Presenting the Lisu

One of the least well-known peoples, he stands out for being provided with an egalitarian society, without chiefs in most of the villages, where the balance between the genres has been supported up to the present, in spite of the external influences.

The Lisu there is a people who lives in the western end of the Province of Yunnan, and in the nearby regions of the neighbor Myanmar (Burma). Also there is a minor number of Lisu in Thailand and in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

His population in China was concerning 700.000 persons in the year 2000. In Myanmar it is anticipated that there is another 250.000 Lisu and in Thailand approximately 35.000. The above mentioned have come to Thailand in the last 50 years, his step across Yunnan has modified his language up to making him unintelligible for the rest of the Lisu.

Nevertheless, neither a sense of ethnic group nor nation exists between the Lisu. His sense of being a community does not go beyond the villages concerning which they organize his lives.

Are called themselves the same Lisuchang, and according to the clothes that they dress: White Lisu, Lisu blacks and flowery Lisu.

Most of the Lisu lives in the province of Yunnan, in the prefecture of Nujiang and the district of Weixi. Few ones in the least accessible regions of Lijiang, Dali and Baoshan. Also there are a few Lisu in the Province of Sichuan, in the districts of Muli, Yanyuan and Yanbian.
In general they live in mountainous areas, with deep vales, as in the shores of the rivers Nujiang and Lancang, where the living conditions are very hard. Many of his villages are to more than 4.000 meters of altitude, generally isolated of the routes of more journeyed comuniocación.

His language belongs to the family tibeto-birmana, branch yi. It has big relation with the languages yi and the naxi. Formerly they had two alphabets. One developed by the missionaries and other created by themselves, with approximately 500 characters pictográficos, of use in the Weixi region.

His language has two dialects, which speakers can communicate without difficulty:
- Dialect of Weixi
- Dilaecto of Nujiang

Copyright © 2004 www.wuhancom.net