“If you want to be rich, build roads first.”
The Hlai, also known as Li or Lizu, are a Kra–Dai-speaking ethnic group, one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China. The vast majority live off the southern coast of China on Hainan Island, where they are the largest minority ethnic group. Divided into the five branches of the Qi (Gei), Ha, Run (Zwn), Sai (Tai, Jiamao) and Meifu (Moifau), the Hlai have their own distinctive culture and customs. 黎 (Lí), which was pronounced /lei/ in Middle Chinese is the Chinese transcription of their native name, which is Hlai. They are sometimes also known as the “Sai” or “Say”. During China’s Sui Dynasty, their ancestors were known by various names, including Lǐliáo (俚僚), a general term encompassing several non-Han ethnic groups in Southern China. The name Li first is recorded during the Later Tang period (923–937 CE).
The Li are one of China’s 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, and they reside primarily on the southern coast of China’s beautiful and tropical Hainan island. Their ancestors were among the first people to inhabit the land and much of their culture is still intact. We wanted to learn more about this amazing group of people. The name “Li” is actually a generalization that refers to several different native peoples of Hainan, namely the Gai, Ji, Bendi, Meifu, and Jiamao, of which Gai constitute the majority. All in all, the number of Li is estimated at around 1.3 million. Archaeological evidence dating back to 1000 B.C. proves that the Li were the first people to populate Hainan. Today, they are mostly concentrated in the island’s autonomous prefectures, most notably in the one named after the ethnic group itself. The Li Autonomous Prefecture lies at the foot of Wuzhishan, which translates to “Five Fingers Mountain”. The Li call it such based on the legend that the five peaks are the fossilized fingers of a former Li clan chief. Though the Li have long had contact with the mainland, their relative isolation has kept many of their cultural traditions intact, even to this day.
Li, also called Hlai, indigenous people of Hainan Island, off the southern coast of China, and an official minority of China. The official name Li is applied to a number of different local groups, most of whom speak languages distantly related to the Tai language family. Until Chinese linguists created a romanized orthography for their language in the 1950s, they had no writing system of their own. The Li live intermingled with people officially classified as Miao (known in Southeast Asia as Hmong). The importance of these two peoples was recognized by the creation of a Hainan Li-Miao autonomous prefecture, but this entity was dissolved when Hainan was made a province in 1988. The Li have also been influenced by Austronesian-speaking peoples and, particularly in the past two centuries, by the Han Chinese. In the early 21st century the Li numbered nearly 1.25 million. The majority of Li have settled in upland river valleys and grow paddy or wet rice and raise water buffalo and cattle. After China reopened its economy, many Li shifted to commercial agriculture, especially the planting of rubber trees. The long isolation of the Li from the centres of Chinese culture have made it possible for them to preserve many aspects of their traditional culture, including distinctive clothing and religious practices centred around locality and ancestral spirits. Li cultural practices have become one of the attractions that draw Chinese and foreign tourists to Hainan Island.
In China, there is an interesting ethnic group – Li people. Traditionally, they master in growing cotton and producing cotton weavings. Local women are involved in every stage of the process. It is so exciting to watch these females work with authentic tools, use old traditional weaving techniques and patterns, wear their folk costumes, etc. It’s a pity that every year fewer and fewer Li women learn how to work with handicrafts. Hainan Island is the major area in China where Li ethnic people reside. It is home to 1.3 million of Li people. The Li ethnicity has its own language but no characters. Its costumes and accessories and their designs vary from one clan to another. They represent ethnic Li’s historical evolution, cultural heritage, and aesthetic standards. They play a vital role in the diverse folk customs and activities. The ancestors of Li people originally wove plant fabrics. They gradually developed a complete set of spinning, dyeing, weaving, and embroidering techniques and passed it as a precious legacy from one generation to another. The techniques are proof to the development of China’s cotton textile industry and are a living fossil of China’s textile history. Hainan Island is one of the Chinese regions where cotton was first grown. Textile activities once prevailed in almost all Li ethnic villages.
The Li people are one of the ancient nationalities and one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China’s government. Li people are one of the Lingnan ethnic groups in China, given priority to with agriculture. Li women are good at spinning, Li brocade and Li sheet is famous in the world. Hainan, China’s second largest island, is the home of the Li ethnic group. Most of them live in and around Tongze, capital of the Hainan Li-Miao Autonomous Prefecture, and Baoting, Ledong, Dongfang and other counties under its jurisdiction; others live among people of the Han and Hui ethnic groups in other parts of the island. Lying at the foot of the Wuzhi Mountains, the Li area is a tropical paradise with fertile land and abundant rainfall. Coconut palms and rubber trees line the beaches and people in some places reap three crops of rice a year and grow maize and sweet potatoes all the year round. The area is the country’s major producer of tropical crops such as coconut, arica, sisal hemp, lemon grass, cocoa, coffee, rubber, oil palm, cashew, pineapple, cassava, mango and banana.
THE LI, COMPRISED OF FIVE TRIBES (Ha, Qi, Run, Meifu, Sai), are the Indigenous inhabitants of Hainan Island, China. It is believed that they migrated here more than 2,000 years ago from the mainland. The island of Hainan has approximately the same geographical area as Taiwan and lies at the same latitude as Hawai’i. The word “Hainan” means “South of the Sea,” but the Chinese likewise call their far southern possession “The Tail of the Dragon”; a wild place at the end of the Chinese world that at one time or another was considered more remote and mysterious than Tibet or Mongolia. Run Li hand and leg tattoos, ca. 1930. It was not appropriate for a Run Li woman to have her hands tattooed until she was married. According to the German ethnologist Hans Stübel, the origin of Li tattooing lay in legend: “The progenitor of the Li had a daughter, whose mother died shortly after the birth of this child. Whereupon a hoopoe (Upupa epops) fed the child with grains. In remembrance, the Li women still tattoo themselves in order to appear to be as colorful as birds. Perhaps, the tattoos should represent the pattern on the wings of the hoopoes.”
The Li ethnic minority has inhabited Hainan Island since ancient time. At present the total population of the Li people is 1.2 million. Most of the Li ethnic group lives in the Hainan Li autonomous counties Ledong, Dongfang, Baisha, Lingshui, Changjiang and other counties, the two Hainan Li-Miao autonomous prefectures Baoting and Qiongzhong, and the two cities Sanya and Tongshi. A few scatter in Wanning County, Tunchang County, Chengmai County and Ding’an County. Some 3,000 years ago, the Li people had already settled on the Hainan Island. The Li ethnic minority originated from one of the ancient hundred Yue nationalities in southeaster China. Ethnically, the Lis are closely linked to the Zhuang, Dong, Shui, Dai, and other ethnic groups. Some Luoyue people, a branch of the tribes in the south and east, traveled to the Hainai Island before the Qin and Han Dynasties. The inhabitants in the Hainan Island were called “Liliao”(namely, the ancestors of the Li minority) in the Sui Dynasty. As a proper name for the Li minority, Li with a rising tone is said to get its name from Li with a fall-rise tone (a proper name for the minorities living in Guangdong and Guangxi) in about the Song Dynasty. Before the People’s Republic of China was founded, the Li minority was mostly in the phase of feudal mode of production. Some ten thousand Li people, who live on the border among Baoting County, Ledong County, and Baisha County in the hinterland of the Five Fingers Mountains, still keep the remnant of the communal system “System of Collective Mu” (Mu being a unit measuring the area of land) of the primitive kinship community.
The “old village” is the Li ethnic group‘s last ancient community in China. It is in Baicha, a remote village located in Dongfang City in eastern Hainan. More than 500 people still live off the land there, planting arecas and mangoes. The thatched cottages in the village are like boats turned upside-down – in fact they’re called “boat houses” by locals. The 81 homes still standing in the village were included in China’s intangible cultural heritage protection list in 2008. China has long been dedicated to eradicating poverty, contributing to more than 70 percent of global poverty reduction. Through eight years of sustained work, the country’s entire rural poor population has been lifted out of poverty. One important part of the poverty alleviation process is helping impoverished people move from mountainous regions to resettle in places with better natural environments and living conditions.
Hainan is China’s southernmost province, south of Guangdong province and across the Gulf of Tonkin from Vietnam. “Hainan” literally means “South of the Ocean”.The first known inhabitants of Hainan were a Tai–Kadai ethnic group known as the Hlai or Li (黎族). Large scale Han Chinese settlement of Hainan did not occur until the Song Dynasty (960−1279), and continued up until the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The Li people were eventually pushed into the highlands by Han settlers and today, the island has a Han majority, mostly concentrated in the coastal plains, while the Li people remain the largest non-Han ethnic group, mostly concentrated in the southern highlands. For much of its history, Hainan was considered a backwater and used as a place of exile for failed officials. It was administered by the Qing Dynasty and Republic of China as a prefecture of Guangdong Province. It became a separate province in 1988, making it China’s smallest province, and the only island province administered by the PRC. The entire island has been declared a Special Economic Zone. The climate is subtropical to tropical. In January and February, it gets thick fog, especially in coastal areas and the northern part of the island. While the Hainanese diaspora is not as large as that of Fujian and Guangdong, they nevertheless form a significant minority among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Like the aforementioned two provinces, Hainan has benefitted substantially from overseas Chinese investment. The island has been popular with Russian tourists for decades and now gets many tourists from the other cold parts of Europe as well. Hainan is undergoing heavy tourist-oriented development with various international hotel chains establishing resorts, especially in the Sanya area. These days, many wealthy Chinese from the northern provinces own second homes in Hainan, where they move to in the winter to escape the bitter cold that characterises much of northern China. These also means that hotel and real estate prices in the Sanya area are among the most expensive in the world. Hainan also administers the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, which though controlled by China are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.
Indigenous Peoples Literature 
