page_title: Bai people
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Bai people / Religion
caption_attribution_description: English: The Bai peopleBai tea serving ceremonial ground in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. Taken by Tdxiang. Summary The Bai tea serving ceremonial ground in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. Taken by Tdxiang.
context_page_description: The Bai, Pai or Baip, are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China. They numbered 1,933,510 as of 2010.
context_section_description: Although most Bai people adhere to a form of Buddhism that traces its history back to the Nanzhao Kingdom, they also have a native religion of Benzhuism: the worship of ngel zex (本主; běnzhǔ), local gods and ancestors. Ngel zex could be any heroes in history, the prince of the Nanzhao regime, a hero of folklore or even a tiger (for instance, Laojun Jingdi 老君景帝 is a tiger).
  Most Bai people don't belong to any religion. There are minorities practicing Taoism and Christianity. George Clarke, arrived in 1881, was the first Protestant missionary to Bai population. The recent estimation of Bai Christian population is 50,000.
  There are a few villages in Yunnan where residents are Muslims, but speak Bai as their first language. These people are officially classified by Chinese authorities as belonging to the Hui nationality and call themselves Bai Hui ("Bai-speaking Muslims"). They usually say that their ancestors were Hui people, who came to Yunnan as followers of the Mongolian army in the 14th century.
caption: A tea-serving ceremonial ground.
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