Lisu

族About this people

The Lisu people are concentrated in the Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern Yunnan, occupying the steep mountain villages above the Nu (Salween) River gorge — one of the Three Parallel Rivers, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape. Smaller Lisu communities live in Sichuan and across the border in Myanmar, Thailand, and India, where the people are also known as Lisaw.

The Nujiang gorge country is extraordinarily rugged: villages cling to slopes above the river at elevations from 800 to over 3,000 metres, and until recent road building, communities were connected primarily by rope bridges and steep footpaths. Traditional houses were built on timber stilts or stone foundations, and agriculture combined terraced rice and corn fields with gathering of mountain plants and hunting.

A significant portion of Lisu in China are Christian, the legacy of missionary work by James O. Fraser (a British CIM missionary) beginning around 1915, which produced a romanised script for the Lisu language and a substantial body of Christian literature and hymns. This has created communities where Christmas is celebrated alongside traditional festivals. The traditional Knife-Pole Festival (Dao Gan Jie, also called Shangjing) is among the most dramatic cultural events in Yunnan: male performers climb 30-metre poles set with upward-pointing blades, and fire-walking and fire-eating are performed. The spring Guayou Festival celebrates the new year with communal dancing, archery, and crossbow competitions.