About Journal of Chuxiong Normal University

Journal of Chuxiong Normal University

The Journal of Chuxiong Normal University is the academic journal sponsored by Chuxiong Normal University in Chuxiong, Yunnan Province. It carries ISSN 1671-7406, attested in its article DOIs, for example DOI 10.3969/j.issn.1671-7406.2010.03.009 and DOI 10.3969/j.issn.1671-7406.2017.01.020. Founded in 1986, the journal marked forty years of publication with its volume 41 in 2026, and a scholarly appraisal of its history records that it has built a distinctive academic identity around local ethnic cultures — above all the culture of the Yi people, in whose autonomous prefecture the university is the sole university. Its own journal platform presents its current volumes in Chinese and English.

Identity and identifiers

The journal is identified by its sponsor, Chuxiong Normal University, its city, Chuxiong, and ISSN 1671-7406. Its articles carry DOIs in the form 10.3969/j.issn.1671-7406.year.issue.article, attested in 2010 and 2017, placing it in the standard Chinese DOI registration system. The journal maintains its own platform — its English-language home presents the title as Journal of Chuxiong Normal University with an archive of volumes — and its volume numbering is itself an identifier of continuity: volume 35 appeared in 2020 and volume 41 in 2026, a one-volume-per-year sequence that counts back to a first volume in 1986, exactly the founding year recorded in the journal's own forty-year appraisal.

Founding and forty-year appraisal

The journal was founded in 1986. In 2026 its own pages carried an appraisal of its four decades — an article in volume 41, issue 1, pages 1–8, reviewing the journal's development over forty years. That appraisal records that the journal has consistently committed itself to the mission of serving society throughout its development, and that, as an academic journal grounded in central Yunnan Province, it has forged a distinctive and specialised path characterised by its focus on local ethnic cultures. It examines the journal's column design, its representative academic achievements and its scholarly influence, and it sets out the journal's work in constructing a distinctive academic discourse system, contributing to local economic and social development and nurturing local academic researchers, before turning to the journal's future in digitisation and internationalisation. A journal that publishes a documented self-appraisal of this kind gives later directories unusually firm evidence for its character: the ethnic-culture specialisation described in this profile is the journal's own account of itself, published in its own pages.

The sponsoring university

Chuxiong Normal University was built on the base of Chuxiong Teachers College, which started in 1978. In May 2001, approved by the Ministry of Education, it was established through the merger of the former Chuxiong Teachers College and the Chuxiong Teachers College for Nationalities. In 2009 it was awarded the title National Civilized Unit by the Central Civilization Commission — the first school in Yunnan Province to receive that honour — and in 2017 it was awarded National Civilized Campus, recorded as the only university in Yunnan to hold that honour. The university is the only university of Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture and one of the three local teacher universities among Yunnan's sixteen prefectures. Its old campus is noted for the pagoda on Yanta hill, an ancient tower likened to a Chinese writing brush and called the Pearl of Yi Prefecture.

Chuxiong and Yi culture

Chuxiong City is the prefecture seat of Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, one of only two Yi autonomous prefectures among China's thirty ethnic autonomous prefectures. The prefecture administers nine counties and one municipality with a population recorded at 2.54 million across 26 nationalities, of whom 31.3 per cent are ethnic minorities and 25.2 per cent are Yi. The region promotes itself as the hometown of eastern humans, the hometown of dinosaurs, a kingdom of high-quality wild fungi and the Chinese grand view garden of the Yi ethnic group. This is the cultural territory the journal has made its specialism: Yi history, language, literature, costume and heritage, studied by the university that also built a specialised database and data centre for Yi culture with national funding support in the 2010s, as its library's published work records.

Distinctive columns and subjects

The journal's forty-year appraisal singles out three strands: its in-depth exploration and theoretical advancement of local ethnic cultures; its multidimensional interpretation of Chinese dietary culture; and its broader research on the protection, transmission and innovation of intangible cultural heritage. The journal's ordinary contents show the same profile at article level: its 2020 volume carried studies of wells and water-drawing methods in Han and Wei dynasty frescoes, of the rise of chieftain families in Wuding County in the buffer zone between Yi and Han cultures, of the foundations of pre-school education, and of Wu Lien-Teh's contribution to China's table manners — the dietary-culture strand in action, examining the history of sanitary dining in the first half of the twentieth century. Ethnic history, food culture and heritage studies in one volume is a combination no national journal assembles; it is this journal's signature.

Scope

Beyond its distinctive strands, the journal publishes across the sciences and humanities of its sponsoring university, as the directory record for the title states. Chuxiong Normal University's structure includes schools of humanities, geographical sciences and tourism management, music and pre-school education among others, and the journal's pages range from geography and history to education research and the natural sciences. The balance is deliberate: a comprehensive university journal that keeps named specialisms inside a general frame, so that Yi-culture and dietary-culture scholars find a home title while the university's other disciplines retain their outlet. The appraisal's account of the journal's columns confirms that this balance is a matter of editorial design, not accident.

Serving society and nurturing local scholars

The journal's self-appraisal emphasises two social functions beyond publication itself: contributing to local economic and social development, and nurturing local academic researchers. In a prefecture whose only university is a teacher-training institution, the journal is the first peer-reviewed outlet most local scholars ever publish in, and the training ground on which the region's academic community is built. Its commitment to serving society, stated as its mission across forty years, is the editorial form of the university's own purpose in Chuxiong: the prefecture's knowledge about itself — its Yi heritage, its food culture, its intangible heritage — is researched, refereed and preserved in the prefecture, in a journal that has now run for four decades.

Indexing and discoverability

The journal's articles carry DOIs attested across the 2010s under ISSN 1671-7406, and its own bilingual platform exposes its archive and current volumes to the web, including English presentation of its articles and metrics. The forty-year appraisal itself is published on that platform with an English abstract, a sign of the internationalisation the article discusses. For international readers, the journal is the most direct published route into Yi-culture scholarship from within the Yi prefecture itself — a discoverability grounded in specialisation rather than scale.

Publication continuity

Founded in 1986, DOI-registered in 2010 and 2017, at volume 35 in 2020 and volume 41 in 2026, the journal has one of the longest documented continuous runs of any journal in this batch of Sichuan and Yunnan university titles. Its volume count and its founding year agree with each other, and its own published history confirms both. The title has followed its sponsor through the 2001 merger that created Chuxiong Normal University, and the serial identity carried by ISSN 1671-7406 spans the whole university era.

How to identify the journal

Cite the journal as Journal of Chuxiong Normal University, ISSN 1671-7406, sponsored by Chuxiong Normal University, Chuxiong, Yunnan, China. Founded in 1986, it is distinguished by its focus on local ethnic cultures — especially Yi culture — Chinese dietary culture and intangible cultural heritage, alongside comprehensive coverage of its university's sciences and humanities.