Lisu people belong to the South Asian type of Mongolian race, and their national language belongs to the Yi branch of Tibeto-Burman language family of Sino-Tibetan language family. Their writing is divided into old and new Lisu languages, and they generally believe in primitive religions. Lisu nationality originated from the ancient frontier ethnic system and has a certain relationship with Yi nationality.
They are mainly distributed in the basin areas of Nujiang River and Enmeikaijiang River (a tributary of Irrawaddy River), that is, the border areas of Yunnan, China, Tibet and Kachin, Myanmar, and the rest are scattered in other parts of Yunnan, China, northeastern India and the border areas of Thailand and Myanmar. According to the statistics of the sixth national census in 20 10, the total population of Lisu nationality in China is126131.