The population is about 43 thousand. The Pumi people mainly reside in the Lanping, Lijiang, Weixi, Yongsheng counties in Yunnan Province, as well as in Ninglang Yi Autonomous County. A few of them live in the Muli Tibetan Autonomous County and Yanyuan County of Sichuan Province. The people use the Pumi language which belongs to the Qiangic branch of Tibeto-Burman languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are two dialects, the south and the north, and they differ significantly from each other. The Pumi used to employ a kind of characters spelled in Tibetan script, but it was not widely used. At present, they mainly use the Chinese characters. In the past, the Pumi people were mainly engaged in agricultural production. However, since more than 90% of their land are mountain areas and their techniques were slow, their production was underdeveloped. In recent decades, they have developed rapidly in various aspects with the strong support of the country. The Pumi people are polytheists and worship their ancestors. Some of them also believe in Tibetan Buddhism and Taoism. The major festivals of the Pumi include “Big New Year” which is the “Spring Festival”, “Big Fifteenth Festival” and the “New Rice Festival”. The Pumi people living in Ninglang celebrate the “Big Fifteenth Festival” on the fourteenth day of the twelfth lunar month. People wear new clothes, go camping on the mountains and hold bonfire parties. People use new grains to make wine, cook meals as sacrifices for the ancestors and invite relatives and friends to banquets to celebrate the “New Rice Festival” during the harvest season.