According to the last census conducted in 2020, there are 47,209,277 people residing in the Yunnan province. There are also over 2.5 million Chinese people in the Diaspora that consider the province their ancestral homeland. Yunnan is notable for its extremely high level of ethnic diversity, and it has the highest number of ethnic groups among the autonomous and provincial regions in China. Many of the groups are presented and live neither in compact settlements nor are they considered to reach the threshold of five thousand within those communities to be awarded the official status of living in the province.
Ethnic groups are dispersed among the provinces. Twenty-five of these groups lives in compact communities, which reach or exceed the threshold of having more than five thousand souls that identify with the community. Most dialects of the Chinese languages which are spoken in the Yunnan province belong to the southwestern version of the Mandarin Chinese group, and therefore it is extremely similar to the two neighboring provinces. In addition to local dialects, many people in the province speak Standard Chinese, which is the official Mandarin version called Putonghua.
Because of the communist state, there is no official religion in any area. Most of the religious groups within the area belong to ethnic minorities, as much as 90% of the composition of religious observance. The predominant religious minority group is Chinese Buddhism, with small groups of Muslims, Taoists, and Christians.
Yunnan is a landlocked province that is located in the southwest portion of the People's Republic of China. The capital of the province is Kunming and borders the neighboring provinces of Guizhou and Sichuan. It also borders many Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Lao, and Myanmar. Yunnan is a largely mountainous area that has high elevations. Most of the population has moved to settle towards the eastern part of the province, as the altitude in the west makes living difficult for both rural and urban establishments. Yunnan is rich in natural resources, so it is considered one of the least developed provinces in China, due to the population focusing on labor. It has the largest reserves of tin, zinc, aluminum, and lead.
From the Yuan dynasty onward, the prince was part of a central government-sponsored population that moved toward the southwestern frontier. Two major waves of migrants had arrived from the rest of the Han-majority populations in the southeast and northern China.
The waves of immigration have made Yunnan the most ethnically diverse province in the country and it is the most tolerant of migrants. Yunnan is famously known for being the birthplace of tea. The legend goes that the humans of the region had figured out that eating the leaves was pleasant, and adding boiling water would infuse the rest of the concoction with the same taste and benefits. The region is also considered to be the origin of the cannabis plant, which was studied for its psychoactive properties on humans and animals.