The Mongols in Yunnan are the descendants of the Yuan Dynasty, during the era of the Mongol Empire.

Before the mid 13th century, Yunnan was held by many war-like independent states such as the Nanchao and Dali Kingdoms. The Mongol Empire under Mongke Khan conquered the Dali Kingdom in 1253. Until 1273, a Chinggisid prince received the viceroyalty over the area. Kublai Khan appointed the first governor, Turkmen Sayid Ajall, in Yunnan in 1273. Yunnan and Hunan were main bases for Mongol military operations in Indo-China. It was called Yunnan district with Kunming headquarter during the Yuan. After the expulsion of the Mongols from China in 1368, the Ming Dynasty destroyed the Yuan loyalists in Yunnan under Basalawarmi in 1381 and occupied it.

It totally has 13 thousand people, who are heavily influenced by the Yi culture, inhabiting in the Xingmenxiang of Tonghai, they can speak the Yi and Han languages, and also the Mongolian which mostly can be understood by those in north. They have the same dresses as the Mongols in north.

Mongols (Mongolian:  Монголчууд (help·info)), Mongolchuud) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. Owing to wars and migrations, Mongols are also found in some Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia (a smaller number of Mongols can also be found in Xinjiang in northwest China). The Buryat branch of the Mongol ethnic group can be found in the autonomous republic of Buryatia, Russia. Ethnic Mongols are bound together by a common language and culture. They speak languages belonging to the Mongolic languages. The contiguous territories inhabited by ethnic Mongols is also known as Greater Mongolia^{[disambiguation needed ]}. There are approximately 10 million ethnic Mongols in total.

A definition includes the Mongols proper, who can be approximately divided into the eastern Mongols (the Khalkha Mongols, the Inner Mongolians, the Buryats), and the Oirats. In a wider sense, the Mongol people includes all people who speak a Mongolic language, such as the Kalmyks of eastern Europe.

Coordinates: 24°30′N 101°30′E / 24.5°N 101.5°E / 24.5; 101.5

Yunnan (simplified Chinese: 云南; traditional Chinese: 雲南; pinyin: Yúnnán; IPA: [y̌nnǎn] ( listen)) is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately 394,000 square kilometers (152,000 sq mi) and with a population of 45.7 million (2009). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.

Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with high elevations in the northwest and low elevations in the southeast. Most of the population lives in the eastern part of the province. In the west, the relative height from mountain peaks to river valleys can be as much as 3,000 m.^{[citation needed]} Yunnan is rich in natural resources and has the largest diversity of plant life in China. Of the approximately 30,000 species of higher plants in China, Yunnan has perhaps 17,000 or more.^{[citation needed]} Yunnan's reserves of aluminium, lead, zinc and tin are the largest in China, and there are also major reserves of copper and nickel.^{[citation needed]} Yunnan has over 600 rivers and lakes, which provide an annual water supply of 222 billion cubic meters.^{[citation needed]} Projected hydropower reserves stand at 103 GW, with an exploitable capacity of 90 GW.^{[citation needed]}

The Torch Festival or Fire Festival (Chinese: 火把节; pinyin: Huǒbǎ Jié) is one of the main holidays of the Yi people of southwest China, and is also celebrated by other ethnic groups of the region. It is celebrated on the 24th or 25th day of the sixth month of the Yi calendar, corresponding to August in the Gregorian calendar. It commemorates the legendary wrestler Atilaba, who drove away a plague of locusts using torches made from pine trees. Since 1993, the government of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan has sponsored a modernised celebration of the festival, featuring wrestling, horse racing, dance shows, and a beauty contest.Different groups set the festival at different time.

The original Torch Festival, according to some scholars, was based on a calendar used by Bai and Yi people in ancient times. The calendar included 10 months, 36 days in a month, and two Star Returning Festivals in winter and summer respectively. The two Star Returning Festivals were both considered the New Year, and the one in summer was called the Torch Festival as people often lighted a torch on that day. There are also many other legends about the origin of the Torch Festival, yet all of them have the purpose of offering sacrifice to duties and dispelling ghosts, as a wish for a harvest.

Sa Dingding (simplified Chinese: 萨顶顶; traditional Chinese: 薩頂頂; pinyin: Sà Dǐngdǐng, born Zhou Peng (Chinese: 周鹏), December 27, 1983) is a Chinese folk singer and songwriter. She is of mixed Han and Mongolian ancestry, and sings in languages including Mandarin, Sanskrit, Tibetan, as well an imaginary self-created language to evoke the emotions in her songs. She also plays traditional instruments such as the guzheng and matouqin (horse-head fiddle).

Born to a family of wage-earning class in Inner Mongolia, China inheriting Han Chinese ancestry from her father and Mongolian ancestry from her mother, Sa Dingding was influenced by the music of the ethnic minorities while living with her grandmother in Inner Mongolia until age 6. She also became interested in Buddhism and taught herself Tibetan and Sanskrit. Later on, she moved to Beijing to study music at the PLA Academy of Arts.

At age 18, she released her first album entitled Dong Ba La under her birth name Zhou Peng, awarding her with the title of China’s Best Dance Music Singer.