Li of Hainan Island and Their Brocade of Great Antiquity

On the great tropical island of Hainan, off the southern coast of China, live the Li, the earliest people of the island and its true natives. The largest minority of Hainan, they settled the island some three thousand years ago, long before the Han came from the mainland, and they are famous for the Li brocade, among the oldest cotton-weaving traditions in China, and for the boat-shaped houses and face tattoos of their old way of life.

This account follows the Li, who call themselves the Hlai, from their ancient crossing to the island, through their forest villages and their weaving, into their Tai-Kadai language, their worship of the ancestors and the spirits of the forest, and the brocade, coconut, and third-month festival that mark them. It ends with the Li of today, keeping their island heritage alive on a Hainan transformed by the modern world.

The First People of the Tropical Island
Hlai, Li, and the Name of the Islanders
The Hlai Tongue of the Island
The Mountains and Forests of Hainan
The Villages, the Peak-Cap Houses, and the Old Order
The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Li
The Ancestors, the Spirits, and the Priests of the Island
The Brocade, the Tattoo, and the Ways of the Li
The Weavers of Brocade and the Makers of the Island
Rice, Coconut, and the Table of the Tropics
The Third Month, the Harvest, and the Feasts
From the Ancient Yue to the People of Modern Hainan
The Li in Modern Hainan

The First People of the Tropical Island

On the great tropical island of Hainan, off the southern coast of China in the warm waters of the South China Sea, live the Li, the earliest people of the island and its true natives. Numbering close to a million and a half, they are the largest minority of Hainan and among the older peoples of the Chinese south, settled on the island long before the Han arrived from the mainland.

The Li belong to the Tai-Kadai family of peoples, more precisely to its Hlai branch, kin in the deep past to the Zhuang and the Bouyei of the mainland and, more distantly, to the Thai and the Lao. Their forebears are thought to have crossed to Hainan from the mainland in the remote past, perhaps three thousand years ago or more, making them the first settlers of the island.

Cut off on their island, the ancestors of the Li developed a way of life and a language of their own, distinct from those of their mainland kin, and they spread across the mountainous interior and the plains of the island. When the Han began to settle Hainan, the Li were pushed from the coasts and the good lowland into the forested mountains of the centre and south, where their heartland remains.

To speak of the Li is to speak of the native people of a tropical island, farmers of rice in the valleys and the hills, keepers of one of the oldest weaving traditions in China, and honourers of their ancestors and the spirits of the forest. The first to make Hainan their home, they hold a place apart among the peoples of China as the true islanders of the tropical south.

Hlai, Li, and the Name of the Islanders

The people are known to China and the world as the Li, the Chinese rendering of their name, and it is under this name that the state recognises them as one of its nationalities and sets aside the autonomous districts of their island homeland. It is by Li that they appear in the records, on the maps, and in the accounts of the peoples of Hainan.

Among themselves the Li call their nation Hlai, or a word close to it, and it is by this name that scholars know their language and its branch of the Tai-Kadai family. The Hlai are thus the same people as the Li, the one name given from without and the other from within, and both point to the native islanders of Hainan.

The Li are not a single uniform people but are divided into several groups, distinguished by dialect, dress, and custom, whose names appear in the older accounts, among them the groups the Chinese knew by various local labels. These divisions reflect the long settlement of the island and the isolation of its mountain valleys, where each community kept somewhat to its own ways.

Whatever the divisions, the Li know themselves as one people, the Hlai, the natives of Hainan, sharing a common origin, a common tongue in its several dialects, and a common body of custom rooted in the island. The name Li is the mark of their standing as the first people of Hainan, set apart from the Han of the towns and the Miao who came later to the island’s hills.

The Hainan Provincial Museum of Ethnology

The Hlai Tongue of the Island

The Li speak Hlai, a language of the Tai-Kadai family that forms a branch of its own, set apart by long ages of isolation on the island from its mainland kin. Though it springs from the same ancient stock as Zhuang and the other Tai tongues, Hlai has grown so distinct that its kinship is clear only to the scholar, a mark of the great age of the Li settlement of Hainan.

Like its Tai relatives, Hlai is a tonal language, distinguishing meaning by the pitch of the voice, and it is spoken in several dialects across the island, so different in places that speakers of the far dialects may struggle to understand one another. This variety reflects the broken, mountainous country of the Li heartland, where each valley kept somewhat to its own speech.

For most of their history the Li had no writing of their own, and their store of song, legend, and lore was carried by memory and by mouth, handed down through the generations in the villages of the island. The great body of their custom and their history lived in the spoken and the sung word, kept by the elders and the singers of the people.

In the modern age a romanised script has been devised for Hlai, and efforts have been made to record and teach the language, while standard Chinese has spread through schooling and the dealings of daily life. Most Li today speak both their mother tongue and Chinese, and the pressure of the larger language is strong, so that the keeping of Hlai among the young is a matter of concern for those who cherish it.

The Mountains and Forests of Hainan

The homeland of the Li is the tropical island of Hainan, and above all its mountainous centre and south, a green country of forested peaks, deep valleys, and swift rivers under a hot and humid sky. The greatest number live in the autonomous counties of the island’s interior, clustered about the great massif of Mount Wuzhi, the five-fingered peak that is the highest and most sacred mountain of Hainan.

This is a land of the tropics, warm the year round, drenched by the summer monsoon, and clothed in dense rainforest on the higher slopes. The Li settled the valleys and the lower hills, where they cleared land for rice, both in flooded paddies where the ground allowed and in dry hillside fields cleared from the forest, and they gathered the rich produce of the tropical woods around them.

When the Han came to Hainan they took the coasts and the fertile lowland plains, and the Li were pushed back into the mountainous interior, which became their stronghold and their refuge. There, among the forested peaks and remote valleys, they kept their language and their ways through the centuries, more sheltered from the mainland world than the peoples of the plains.

Around Mount Wuzhi and through the southern hills the Li built their villages, once famed for the distinctive boat-shaped houses roofed in thatch that curved like an upturned hull. Rooted to their tropical valleys and their rice, and gathering the coconut, the areca, and the fruits of the warm island, the Li made of the Hainan uplands a homeland unlike any other in China.

The Villages, the Peak-Cap Houses, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the Li lived in their villages under the sway of custom and the guidance of elders, without kings or a native nobility of their own. Each village was a community of farming households, and among some Li groups the villages of a district were bound together in an old institution of kin and land often known as the peak, which held the fields in common and ordered the affairs of the group.

The famous houses of the old Li villages were the boat-shaped dwellings, long low houses of bamboo and timber thatched with palm and grass, their roofs curving down like the upturned hull of a boat almost to the ground. Raised in some places on low posts against the damp of the tropics, these distinctive houses sheltered the family and its stores and gave the Li village its unmistakable look.

Life turned on the growing of rice and on the gathering of the rich produce of the tropical forest, the coconut, the areca nut, the rattan, and the game and fruit of the woods. Wealth was reckoned in land, in cattle and buffalo, and in the bronze gongs and drums that were sacred treasures brought out at the great occasions, and the round of the rice year set the rhythm of the community.

Above the villages, the imperial state ruled Hainan from the coastal towns and, at times, through native chiefs drawn from among the Li, while the mountain interior kept much of its freedom. Governed by custom, by elders, and by the bonds of clan and the communal peak, the Li lived as free farmers of the tropical uplands, keeping their ancient ways in the shelter of the forested hills.

The former seat of the Hainan Li-Miao Autonomous Prefecture

The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Li

Li society rests on the household, the clan, and the village, the ties of descent that bind families across the valleys of the island. Descent is reckoned chiefly through the father’s line, and members of a clan share a common ancestor, honour the same forebears, and owe one another the duties of kin, while marriage joins families across the clans of a district.

Among some Li groups the villages of a district were bound together in the communal grouping known as the peak, a body of related families who held land in common, worked together, and shared in the rites of the ancestors. This institution gave the Li a frame of cooperation and mutual aid above the single household, ordering the use of land and the settling of disputes.

The Li built no kings and no wide state, and authority within the village rested on the respect owed to elders, to the heads of clans, and to the priests and specialists who kept the sacred knowledge. Custom, carried in memory and song, governed conduct, and the assembled elders and the community weighed more than any single chief in the ordering of village life.

Women held an honoured place, above all as the weavers whose brocade is among the glories of the Li, and in the old days the tattooing of women’s faces and bodies at the coming of adulthood marked a girl’s passage to womanhood and her belonging to her group. A woman’s skill at the loom and the patterns of her tattoo told those who could read them who she was and to which community she belonged.

The Ancestors, the Spirits, and the Priests of the Island

The religion of the Li is rooted in the worship of their ancestors and in a rich belief in the spirits that fill the tropical world about them. The forebears of the clan are honoured with offerings, for their goodwill is held to guard the family and their neglect to bring sickness and misfortune, and the bond between the living and the dead is carefully kept through the rites of the household.

Around this ancestor worship the Li hold a host of spirits to dwell in the mountains, the great trees, the rivers, the rice fields, and the forest, and above all they revere the spirits tied to the growing of the rice, on which their life depends. Offerings and rites keep these spirits content and secure their blessing on the crop, and taboos hedge about the sacred places and seasons.

The priests and ritual specialists of the Li, versed in the chants and the rites, stand between the people and the spirit world, reading the causes of sickness and misfortune, performing the ceremonies of healing and of the rice year, and leading the rites for the dead. Divination and the reading of omens guided the people in their undertakings, and the specialists held a place of honour in the village.

In later times something of the Taoism and folk religion of the Han reached the Li, and in the modern age Christianity has come to a few communities, but for most the heart of religion remains the honouring of the ancestors and the spirits of the forest and the field. Bound to the land and to the rice, the faith of the Li kept the community in right relation with the unseen world of the tropical island.

The Brocade, the Tattoo, and the Ways of the Li

The greatest glory of the Li is their weaving, and above all the Li brocade, an art so ancient that it is counted among the oldest cotton-weaving traditions in China. The women weave on simple looms cloth of astonishing richness, patterned with figures of men, beasts, plants, and the things of daily life in bright colours, and the finest pieces are treasured, worn at festivals, and made for the marriage chest.

So renowned was Li weaving that in the days of the empire a woman of the Han, who learned the arts of cotton and brocade among the Li of Hainan, is remembered as having carried those skills back to the mainland and helped to spread cotton-working across China. The double-faced embroidery and the patterned brocade of the Li stand among the treasures of Chinese textile art.

Another old tradition, now passed away, was the tattooing of women. At the coming of adulthood a Li girl’s face and body were tattooed in patterns particular to her group, a mark of her passage to womanhood, of her beauty, and of her belonging to her people. The custom, once universal among Li women, faded in the modern age, and only the oldest women now bear the marks.

Song and dance run through Li life, from the courtship songs sung between young men and women to the dances of the festivals, among them the famous bamboo-pole dance, in which dancers step in and out between clashing poles beaten in rhythm. Through the brocade, the old tattoo, and the songs and dances, the Li marked the passages of life and the turning of the year in ways carried down from their forebears.

The Weavers of Brocade and the Makers of the Island

The master craft of the Li is the weaving of brocade, an art carried by the women and reckoned among the oldest cotton-weaving traditions of China. Working on the simple backstrap and frame looms, the women spin cotton, dye it with the plants and barks of the island, and weave cloth of great richness, patterned with figures and worked in bright colour. The double-faced weave, the same on both sides, is a wonder of their skill.

The patterns of the Li brocade carry meaning, telling of the myths, the ancestors, and the daily life of the people, and each Li group has its own designs, so that the cloth is at once an art and a record of identity. A woman’s skill at the loom was a measure of her worth, and the weaving of a girl’s dress and of the cloth for her marriage was a labour of years.

Beyond weaving the Li practise the crafts of a tropical people. They build their houses of bamboo, timber, and thatch, plait rattan and bamboo into baskets, mats, and furniture, and work the abundant produce of the forest. Pottery, the carving of wood, and the making of tools rounded out the crafts of a settled farming people of the island.

The Li also cast and kept bronze gongs and drums, sacred treasures sounded at the great occasions, and worked the coconut, the areca, and other gifts of the tropics into the goods of daily life. Yet it is for the brocade above all that the crafts of the Li are known, an ancient art of the women that clothed the people, marked their groups, and carried the patterns of their forebears down the ages.

Rice, Coconut, and the Table of the Tropics

The food of the Li is the food of a tropical rice people, built on rice grown in the paddies and hill fields of Hainan. Rice is the heart of every meal, boiled or steamed, and among the Li a much-loved way of cooking it is to stuff rice, often with meat, into a length of fresh bamboo and roast it over the fire, so that the grain takes the fragrance of the green wood.

To the rice is added the rich produce of the tropical island, the coconut and its milk, the areca nut, the fruits and greens of the warm land, and the game and fish of the forest and stream. Pork and chicken are the meats of festivals and welcome, and the Li share with the wider south a taste for wild herbs and for the sour and the pungent in their dishes.

The coconut gives the Li table much of its tropical character, its flesh and milk used in cooking and its water drunk, and coconut sugar and other sweets are made from the palms that grow across the island. The areca or betel nut, chewed as a mild stimulant, was long a mark of hospitality, offered to guests and shared at gatherings across Hainan.

Rice wine, brewed in every household, is the drink of hospitality and of ritual, poured for guests, shared at every festival, and offered to the ancestors and the spirits. From the bamboo-roasted rice to the coconut and the areca, the food of the Li is rooted in the paddy and in the rich gifts of a tropical island, a warm-country table unlike that of the peoples of the mainland.

The Third Month, the Harvest, and the Feasts

The best loved of all Li festivals is the San Yue San, the festival of the third day of the third lunar month, a great spring gathering that is above all a festival of the young. On this day the Li don their finest brocade, gather from the villages, and the young men and women sing back and forth in courtship, so that many a match is made, and the day is filled with song, dance, and feasting.

On the third-month festival the community also honours its ancestors and prays for a good year, and the bamboo-pole dance, the songs, and the contests of the young fill the gathering. It has become the great symbol of Li culture, celebrated across Hainan and drawing visitors to see the brocade, the dances, and the music of the island’s first people.

The turning of the rice year brings its own festivals, the rites of planting and the celebrations of harvest, when the community gives thanks to the ancestors and the spirits for the crop and prays for the next, with offerings, feasting, and the sounding of the bronze gongs. The new year too is kept with the gathering of kin and the wearing of the finest dress.

The passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony, and in the old days the tattooing of a girl at her coming of age was a great family occasion. At all these gatherings the bright brocade, the deep voice of the bronze gongs, the bamboo-pole dance, and the courtship songs bring colour and sound, so that the Li meet the great moments of the year and of life with feast and song.

From the Ancient Yue to the People of Modern Hainan

The Li are the oldest people of Hainan, their forebears having crossed to the island from the mainland in the remote past, perhaps three thousand years ago, when they were part of the ancient Yue world of the south. Cut off on their island, they became its first settlers and its native people, spreading across its mountains and plains long before any other came.

From the days of the early empires the Chinese state reached out to Hainan, planting garrisons and towns on the coasts, and over the centuries Han settlers came in growing numbers, taking the lowland plains and pushing the Li back into the mountainous interior. The relations between the newcomers and the natives were often uneasy, and the records tell of many Li risings against the taxes and the officials of the state.

Through the long centuries of imperial rule the Li kept their stronghold in the forested mountains of the island’s centre and south, preserving their language, their weaving, and their customs while the coasts grew ever more Han. In the twentieth century Hainan and its peoples were caught up in the wars and revolutions that swept China, and the Li took part in the struggles of that turbulent age.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Li were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, and an autonomous prefecture, later reorganised into autonomous counties, was established in their homeland around Mount Wuzhi. In recent times Hainan has been made a province and a great centre of tourism, bringing rapid change to the island and drawing the Li into the wider life of modern China.

The Li in Modern Hainan

Today the Li number close to a million and a half, the largest minority of Hainan and still the great native people of the island, living chiefly in the autonomous counties of the mountainous interior and south around Mount Wuzhi. From the remote forest villages to the growing towns, the Li remain rooted in the island that their forebears first settled three thousand years ago.

Modern life has come swiftly to Hainan, for the island has been made a province and a great resort of the tropics, its coasts lined with the hotels and beaches that draw visitors from across China and beyond. This has brought roads, schools, and prosperity, and a growing trade in culture, for the brocade, the third-month festival, and the bamboo-pole dance of the Li are shown to the many who come to the island.

The same forces bring change and strain. The pull of the towns and of the tourist economy, standard Chinese and modern schooling, and the passing of the old ways press upon the Hlai tongue, the weaving, and the customs of the people. The face tattoo has all but vanished, borne now only by the oldest women, and the mother tongue faces the weight of the larger language.

Yet the Li carry their heritage with growing pride. The ancient art of the brocade, honoured as a treasure of humanity, has been taken up again by young weavers, the third-month festival is celebrated across the island, and the boat-shaped house and the bamboo-pole dance are cherished as marks of who the Li are. The first people of Hainan, they keep their island heritage alive in a fast-changing China.