| Summary: | The Bai are one of China's 55 minority nationalities and one of more than twenty in Yunnan Province. Their total population amounts to 1.13 million divided into three vernacular areas, which are found in the extreme west of the province bordering on Burma. The first of these is centered on Dali, where there live 500,000 Bai. The second area is found at Jianchuan and the third is at Bijiang Jianchuan is representative of the Central Vernacular with a population of 300,000 and Bijiang of the Northern Vernacular with 100,000. They are today called in Chinese Bai or Baizu, but in the past they have been referred to as the Minjia or 'the minority' in opposition to the Han Chinese. Although the name Minjia is mentioned in Scott's Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shari States (1900), no one is today aware of their presence in Myanmar.
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