Around Lugu lake live the Mosuo people. They are a branch of the Naxi Nationality.

The Mosuo folk customs, based on the matriarchal family and the "Axia" marriage pattern, are the "living fossils of the marriage patterns in the primitive patriarchal society", which are rarelT seen in the modern world. "Axia" means "intimate mates". The "Axia" marriage is also is called "walking marriage" by the local people. It refers to that the husband goes to the house of his female intimate in his heart at night, and returns home in a hurry at the daybreak. That is to say it is a marriage pattern in which husband and wife live together at night and depart each other at sunrise.

In a Mosuo family, the oldest woman is the hostess. A man doesn't get married and a woman doesn't get married off.They live with their own family separately. The relationship between the man and woman is that they live together only at night, and they will not be husband and wife. When the woman gives birth to a baby who will be reared by the woman.The man has no obligations to rear it. How long will this "Ax-ia" relation last entirely depend en the feeling between them.if the feeling between them breaks, the "Axia" relation disappears automatically. The relationship among the members of
the family is a consanguineous one. There doesn't exist the relation between a wife and her husband's mother, and a wife and her husband's sisters. The whole family live peacefully without any unnecessary quarrelling. The woman in the family take the children borne by their sisters as their own. The children call the senior women Mum in the family.

The unique Mosuo marriage and family modes,rarelly seen in the world now, provide hard-to-find materials for the study of the formation of the human society and of the marriage patterns in the patriarchal society. They attracts many scholars from home and abroad to Lugu Lake to do investiga-
tions, and at the same time arouse great interests of the tourists around the world.