The“Tibetan -Yi corridor”is a concept constructed by FeiXiaotong and empha-sized by him during the late 1970s and 1980s. In 2011 ,it was replaced with“Tibetan-Qiang-Yi corridor”,a concept which is regarded to conform more to the historical reality. Actually,the earliest research on ethnic corridors largely relied on the earlier research of foreign missionaries who preached their religion in the western part of Si-chuan. It could be said that the missionaries’ re-search on the Qiang opened up the research of the ethnic corridor ,and gradually expanded it to the entire area of western China. Due to the efforts of the missionaries,who received the western formal academic training,there was research that went beyond the study of the feudal dynasties of China to the ethnic minority areas. Since the 1930s,follow-ing the research trends of“the frontier science”( bianjiangxue)and“the frontier political studies”( bianzhengxue),and with China’s local intellectu-al elites’ following up,and especially with the in-vestigations and research findings of the scholars from West China Union University and the Frontier Research Society,the external contours and the knowledge on the internal society,history,cul-ture,and language of the“Tibetan -Qiang -Yi corridor”deepened. These concepts and research results all came from outside the corridor while the society and culture from inside the corridor only provided research data.