The Jinuo (alternatively, Jino) ethnic minority, also known as the Youle folk due to their homeland in the Youle mountains, a sparsely-populated, densely-forested, mountainous region of Yunnan Province not far from Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve, live in a number of small enclaves in and around the village of Jinuo in Jinghong County (but with some scattered about in Mengla and Menghai Counties), about 40 kilometers - as the crow flies - east-northeast of the city of Jinghong, capital of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.*

Mention of the Jinuo first appeared in Chinese historical annals during the 18th century, though their presence in Yunnan Province is believed to have predated their historical mention by several centuries. It is believed that the Jinuo may be descendants of the Qiang folk of present-day Sichuan Province who, it is commonly believed, are one of the original, once-populous and dominant peoples to inhabit China (in today's China, Qiang culture, with its oral-only language tradition, is in danger of disappearing) and who were thus forbears to a number of later peoples, including the Tibetan s as well as a number of smaller present-day ethnic minorities of southwestern China, including possibly the Jinuo.

According to this theory, the Jinuo migrated into present-day Yunnan from Sichuan to the north, settling alongside the more dominant and much more numerous Dai folk, whom the Jinuo apparently served as vassals. The Junuo were for centuries mistakenly considered as a subgroup to the Dai. It was not until 1979 that the Chinese government officially recognized the Jinuo as a separate Chinese ethnic minority, China's latest, the 55th**, and numbering about 18,000 individuals (there are a number of Chinese ethnic minorities numbering fewer than 4,000 individuals).