This study investigated the perception and production of Bai tones by native Naxi speakers in Jiuhe. Jiuhe Bai features six lexical tones distinguished by pitch and phonation, while Jiuhe Naxi has three tones differentiated only by pitch. We explored whether Naxi speakers could accurately perceive and produce the Bai tones, particularly those with similar pitch contours. Ten native Naxi speakers participated in the perception and production experiments. The perception experiment involved a discrimination task with all possible pairs of Bai tones. In the production experiment, participants were instructed to produce all the Bai tones with a wordlist of minimal pairs. Both acoustic and EGG signals were recorded and analyzed for pitch and phonation patterns. The discrimination results revealed that native Naxi speakers had difficulty distinguishing certain Bai tones, which were also merged in their own production. Interestingly, not only the tones with similar pitch contours but also those with similar phonation patterns are prone to confusion among the Naxi speakers. The findings can shed new light on the acquisition of L2 tone categories in nonnative speakers, specifically in languages that employ multiple cues for tone distinction.