"On 14–17 December 2017, Lisu Protestants celebrated their Literature Centenary Jubilee in Pummati of Myitkyina, the capital city of Myanmar’s northern Kachin State. Local community members, Lisu guests outside Myanmar, government officials and leaders of Kachin subgroups gathered together to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Lisu Christian script, known as the ‘Fraser script’. Central to the festivities were daytime worship services, transnational fellowship meetings, cultural shows and evening music concerts. People could visit the business area, which was packed with trading stalls selling food, Lisu traditional clothes, handicrafts and Lisu‐language music albums. Between 2012 and 2014, I conducted fieldwork on the church singing and socio‐religious change of the Lisu in Yunnan’s northwestern Nujiang Prefecture. That doctoral work set the path of my postdoctoral book project on how transnational sound production, circulation and consumption become integral to the Lisu perception and practice of faith on the China–Myanmar border. The conceptualisation of the book benefited from an intensive 40‐day field trip (December 2017–February 2018) in Myanmar’s Kachin State and Yangon. Therefore, I was fortunate to attend the Jubilee that drew the Lisu from around the globe during that fieldwork in addition to my interviews with Lisu media practitioners and observations of their studio production. I was intrigued by an apparent paradox I had seen in the Jubilee. It was advertised as a cultural event, but was permeated by Christian formality. It seemed to have provided an opportunity for Lisu participants to share their Christian identity while having consciously incorporated traditional artefacts and musical traditions to articulate ethnic identity. This presented a contrast to what I had observed in Nujiang, where most Christian Lisu still followed the unwritten rule of abstaining from animistic worship, traditional performing arts and other traditional practices deemed inappropriate.1 Moreover, ‘litpix’,2 a Lisu term that was unfamiliar to me, was frequently used to refer to ‘culture’ during my conversation with Lisu participants and in the church and political leaders’ public speech. It appeared in the name of the Jubilee’s organising committee, the Lisu Tot’et be Litpix Zzujei Yong (Lisu literature and culture committee). Pummati, the Lisu land purchased in around 2013 for hosting community events, was appraised as ‘Lisu Litpix Mut’ (the land of Lisu culture). During my time in Myanmar, most people I talked to – Christian leaders of various domains, media practitioners, Bible school teachers and students, and performers of Lisu cultural dance – used ‘tradition’ interchangeably with ‘culture’ to explain to me the meaning of ‘litpix’. But when I asked them to articulate what ‘culture’ stands for, they would turn to specific artefacts, performing arts and customs for reference. Why is there a renewed interest among the Burmese Lisu in their pre‐Christian traditions? How does the notion of litpix come into use, and for what purposes? In this paper, I examine a Christian Lisu elite’s attempt to gain access to competitive political, economic and cultural resources to achieve future‐making goals through their positive engagement with traditional culture for the performance of self‐representation. In particular, I look into litpix’s operations and efficacies as markers of distinction and the ways that this relationship is articulated in practice against the background of the Lisu people’s ‘double‐minority’ status both within Kachin State and in the Burmese nation. As I will show, the Lisu elite’s future‐making attempt is not only for the development of the future generation but also for their greater involvement. The Lisu are a Tibeto‐Burman speaking highland group of over one million who reside across the mountainous areas of southwestern China and Southeast Asia.3 Over 100 years of migration from western Yunnan southwards to Myanmar, Thailand and elsewhere, the transformative social experiences of the Lisu have been shaped by different factors. The classic anthropological work highlighted the role of new economic conditions in transforming the social structures (Gillogly 2006) and gender relations (Hutheesing 1990) of the small Lisu community in northern Thailand. In Lisu‐populated areas of the China–Myanmar border, one important factor for social change has been conversion from animistic practices (Durrenberger 1975) to Protestantism since the early 20th century. Despite constraints facing the Lisu as marginalised members of society, they constantly attempt to establish a resilient path to becoming self‐positioned subjects as an autonomous but compliant people. In Myanmar, where Buddhism is deeply intertwined with the country’s culture and the Bamar‐ethnic majority, about 90% of the 500,000 Lisu population self‐ identified as Christians by December 2017.4 Kachin State hosts the largest Burmese Lisu population (more than 200,000). It is also home to several other small ethnic groups defining themselves in contrast to the dominating Bamar and Jinghpaw populations yet being part of the Kachin collective affiliation as their primary marker of socio‐political identities. In 1955, the national parliament recognised six sub‐groups of the Kachin – the Jinghpaw, Lawngwaw (Maru), Nung‐Rawang, Lisu, Zaiwa (Atsi) and Lachik – and grouped them under one umbrella.5 The word ‘Kachin’ started to serve as an ethno‐political category. It is against this historical background that I explore the recent formation of the litpix space by the Christian Lisu elite and how it becomes a significant discursive site relating to Lisu self‐representations of modern selves and relations. I should pause to clarify how I use the concept of ‘elite’ among the Lisu. I use ‘elite’ to refer to both long‐established church leaders, and emerging leaders of ethnic organisations, politicians and other sociocultural activists. Akin to the place of the village chief (vutddut reitsu) and animist priest (nitpat) in Lisu traditional socio‐political organisation, they are regarded by the Christian community members as ‘leaders’ who can guide community development based on their authorities in religious and social knowledge. My Lisu interlocutors identified three groups of Christian elite: church leader, cultural leader and political leader. The so‐called church leader – comprised of priests, senior preachers and pastoral team members at various levels – has long been in a monopoly ‘elite’ position among the Burmese Lisu in the sense that institutionalised churches of five denominations have been wielding influence over Lisu public and private life since the latter half of the 20th century. The church leader also constitutes the intellectual authority and remains in control of printed material and public speech, as well as paradigmatic shifts in socio‐religious practice. The emergence of leadership in cultural and political domains over the last three decades is a result of a Christian elite’s engagement with changing national economic, social and political circumstances and interaction with the forces of neighbouring Kachin and Burmese populations. General assumptions persist that those who are the ‘elites’ must control material resources (Scott 2008), maintain tight closed networks (Mills 2000 [1956]) and face confrontations with other social groups (see also the introduction of this issue). The Christian Lisu elite in the non‐Western, non‐industrial context challenge these assumptions. First, their elite position arises not out of any form of superiority but through serving as the community advocate for their ‘non‐elite’ people (see also Rumsby, this issue). Second, the foundation of Lisu elite status relies on their interactions, rather than confrontation, with superior groups such as the Jinghpaw and Burmese leaders. The concept of elite, from this perspective, is dependent more on relationships (political, religious, etc.) between (elite) groups than it is on specific qualifications. This echoes the view of Salverda and Skovgaard‐Smith’s recent article (2018) that the status of elites are both contested and attributed by people they interact with and relate to. Third, Lisu practice exemplifies how ‘the elites … are adapted and altered under the influence of social changes’ (Salverda and Abbink 2013: 10), as new leadership emerged out of religious authority. In the analyses that follow, I examine through what kind of politics the state, religion, ethnicity and other actors possibly influence the Christian Lisu elite’s renewed interest in their pre‐Christian litpix traditions, as well as the challenges involved in translating the singularity of its abstraction into various embodied forms through viable projects. Central to this process is the selection, revision and standardisation of previously marginalised traditional artefacts and practices in the Christian community which are readily tagged as ethnically Lisu when assertion of difference is needed. I argue that the construction of a specifically litpix space independent of religion was crucial in a Christian Lisu elite’s attempt to gain access to political, economic and cultural resources and to legitimise claims to rights for survival and future development of the Lisu while maintaining the church’s predominant influence in the faith community..."