The Yis are distributed over Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces. The population is 6.6 million.
The Yis call themselves "Panduo". They are also called "Nosu", "Misa", "Lasu", "Luoluo", "Sani", "Axi", etc. as variant from place to place.
The Yis have had close relationship with the Shiqiang inhabitants distributed over the western part of our country in the ancient time, a minority nationality formed by the ancient Qiang nationality moving southward in a long-term development with the continued mergence with the aboriginal tribe in the southwestern region. The Yis have their own language and writing, which belong to the Chinese-Tibetan language family. There are six dialects. There existed an ideograph known as CUAN (one of the minority nationalities in present Yunnan Province) writing. Now the standardized Yi writing is used.
The Yis are mainly engaged in agriculture with the cultivation of other crops such as barley, potato, beans, paddy rice and also in growing masson pine, dragon spruce (picea asperata), camphor tree laquer, kapok and other timber.
Yi Nationality appears on the following banknote(s):
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