PAI

Pinyin Bai, also spelled Po, also called Min-chia, people of northwestern Yunnan province, southwest China. Min-chia is the Chinese (Wade-Giles) name for them; they call themselves Pai, or Po, in their own language, which has been classified in the Yi group of the Tibeto-Burman languages. Until recently the language was not written. It contains many words borrowed from Chinese but is itself a non-Chinese, tonal, polysyllabic language with a markedly different grammatical structure. Occupying a triangular area from Shih-ku on the upper Yangtze River down to Hsia-kuan at the foot of Erh Lake, the Pai in the late 20th century were estimated to number 1,660,000, of whom about half lived on the fertile plain between the Ts'ang Mountains and the lake. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the Pai, in accordance with the Communist policy toward non-Chinese peoples, have been given status as a national minority. Their principal city, Ta-li, was from the 6th to the 9th century the capital of the kingdom of Nan-Chao. The Pai probably already formed the bulk of the population of the locality at that time. Most of the Pai are cultivators of wet rice, along with various vegetables and fruits. Those in the hills grow barley, buckwheat, oats, and beans. The lake is heavily fished. They have their own social and kinship organization, based on the village and the extended family (parents, married sons, and their families). Their religion differs little from that of the Chinese; they venerate local deities and ancestral spirits as well as Buddhist and Taoist gods.