Selections from the Naxi Manuscript Collection: Annotated Catalog of Naxi Pictographic Manuscripts

The Library¡¯s collection of 3,342 Naxi manuscripts is the largest collection outside of China and is unrivaled in quality, quantity, and variety among Naxi collections in Europe, the People¡¯s Republic of China, and Taiwan.

LITIGATION SUROUNDING NAKHI ANCIENT MUSIC. China Heritage Quarterly

Nakhi ancient music, as promoted by Xuan Ke and performed for tourists in Lijiang by an ensemble of venerable old men with tortoise shell spectacles and pretty young girls with ruddy cheeks, is just one of the unique cultural properties of the Nakhi that can be sampled by visitors.

Xiao Liu.- Young minorities keep old traditions alive - 2006-03-04

Four years back, He, 35, and a few Naxi friends started a website which has grown into a virtual community of the Naxi people. From just about 40 people in the beginning, the website (www.lijiangtime.net) now has more than 500 registered members.

Xuan Ke - Defender of the Naxi culture - Interviewed by: Juha Leino

Xuan Ke's great grandfather was one of the highly educated government officials sent to work in Yunnan. The history of the family of 77-year-old Xuan is so colorful and eventful that a book could be written about it.

Naxi - pictographic script and complex religious practice - Pierre Evald

The Naxi are the only ethnic group in the world to have their culture preserved in a textual writing system with images and pictographic characters (sijiulujiu) still in use. The ancient scriptures on paper or wooden boards and scrolls remain in their thousands preserved in libraries and museums worldwide.

In the footsteps of Joseph Rock - Kham then and now.

A photoblog showing how eastern Tibet looked in the 1920s and how the same places and people look now. Based on the explorations of botanist Joseph Rock.
Naxi Dongba ceremony, Muli, 2005
Joseph Rock would be pleased to see that the Naxi ceremonies he studied and recorded are again being held near his old home north of Lijiang. [All pics are from the local Muli newspaper, the Liangshan Ribao].

Rite & Traditional Custom, nominee Fire Funeral of Naxi Nationality Zhang Xu(China)

More than 250 years ago, instead of cremating the dead, the Naxi started to bury them in the ground. Today, the cremation tradition is maintained only in Zhongdian County, Yunnan Province.

Edongba 5.01

Learn and input the ancient Dongba hieroglyphs and Geba symbols.

Edongba is a useful program to input Dongba hieroglyphs and Geba symbols which are Naxi's language by English meaning or by Latian alphabet for Naxi into your edit software such as WORD on Windows 2000,Nt,2003,XP.
The Naxi language (a.k.a. Nakhi, Naqxi, Nasi or Moso) is a Sino-Tibetan language, though some linguists classify it as a Burmese-Lolo language. Naxi has been written with Dongba script and Geba script.
The Naxi Dongba script (a.k.a. Tomba or dto-mba) is used exclusively by the Dongba (shamans/priests) as an aid to the recitation of ritual texts during religious ceremonies and shamanistic rituals.

Bruce Chatwin.- In China Rock's Kingdom- The New York Times. March 16, 1986

The Nakhi are the descendants of Tibetan nomads who, many centuries ago, exchanged their tents for houses and settled in the Lijiang Valley, to grow rice and buckwheat at an altitude of over 8,000 feet.

MATTHEW LARKING.- Chinese painters from Naxi minority depict a peasant world being lost to modernity

The paintings in "The Naxi Lifeworld: Native Painters in Northwestern Yunnan" by Zhang Yunling (b. 1955) and Zhang Chunting (b. 1958) proffer a simple and honest way of life, steeped in the seasons, nostalgia, and the pictographic Dongba script of the Naxi people of China's Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.

Joseph Francis Rock

A french website devoted a the most prominent researcher on Naxi history and culture.