There are, according to the 1982 census, over 5,400,000 Yi people in
China (Chen Shilin et.al. 1985:1). The story says that the term Yi ($£)
was coined by Mao Zedong in the 1950s as a designation for a category
of people formerly referred to by a large number of names, the most
common of which were the generic Luoluo (4${ii) or the even broader
term Yi (j^l), which means simply "barbarians." The Chairman, both
ideologically correct as a Communist and grateful for the help some of
these people had rendered to the Communist Party at the time of the
Long March, replaced this old, pejorative Yi with a homophonous term
bearing a better meaning - a tripod or fine cooking pot1
. When the
people of China were classified into 55 minzu in the late 1950s, this
newer, nicer Yi was applied to a large number of diverse people living
primarily in the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou, and in
small numbers in Guangxi (GuojiaMinwei 1981:297)