Today, the Sichuan Ethnic Corridor is home to several culturally and linguistically distinct tribes who, if not the original inhabitants, are settlers who trekked in from further north or west long ago. Most of these tribes identify somewhat with Tibetan ethnicity, lifestyle, and worldview, but blend with their indigenous traditions, and are sometimes influenced by other neighboring cultures too, such as Qiang, Yi, or Han. As well as this cultural melting pot, Sichuan’s Ethnic Corridor is also linguistically very diverse. There are numerous languages and dialects spoken in this region, and most are Qiangic languages, which are not only distinct from each other but also completely different from Tibetan languages.

Hence, the fringe of the Tibetan Plateau, and indeed the fringe of the Tibetan world in Sichuan Province is host to a string of truly unique people groups that don’t easily fit within recognized ethnic categories, nor show up in official ethnic statistics. “Living fossils,” tucked away between the rapidly modernizing Chinese to the east and mainstream Tibetan society to the west, have somehow retained their native customs and festivals, their languages, and the distinctive style of their houses and clothing. Though most are officially categorized within the general Tibetan nationality of China, Sichuan’s Ethnic Corridor has a complex dynamic between political, historical, ethnic, religious, and linguistic factors that affect how the people groups there perceive themselves and how outsiders may view them.