This paper examines how ethnicity and language standardization discourses are negotiated amongst users of the Bái dialect in the Chinese Yúnnán Province. Tapping into Kloss's (1967) Ausbau and Abstand, this paper compares texts in which language users render their vernacular in orthography and in Chinese characters to show the asymmetrical design of a Standard vs. Non-Standard and a Sinitic vs. Non-Sinitic contrast from the national to the local level.