Hainan people

The Hainan people (Chinese: 海南人 Hái-nâm nâng), Hainanese people, or Hainam people is a term referring to the residents of Hainan, the southernmost and smallest Chinese province. The term can be used to refer to all residents and of Hainan island. Hainam Min speakers often refer to their dialect as Qiongwen to distinguish themselves from other groups of Hainan such as the Cantonese, Tanka, Hlai, Miao etc.

Hainan Han people, who today form the majority population of the island, trace their origins to Han immigrants and exiles from Fujian and Guangdong province.^[1][2] By and large, they were not voluntary colonists, but were acting on government orders to populate the sparsely populated island.^[3] By contrast, the Lingaoese, Hlai, Tanka migrated to the island much earlier and are regarded as part of the Nanyue or Baiyue peoples.^[4]

Starting from the Song dynasty, Han settlers from Fujian and Guangdong began settling in the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan island, displacing Nanyue aborigines such as Hlai, who moved to mountain areas. Important areas of settlement by immigrants from Fujian include the areas in and around Haikou, Wenchang, Qionghai, and Wanning. Relations between the Han and Hlai were tense and often erupted into bloody war, with the consequence that the imperial government deported thousands of Miao tribespeople (themselves captured and spared rebels from Guangxi and Guizhou), who were then tasked with protecting the Han colonists and acting as mediators between the Han and the Li peoples.

In the main, Haikou samples showed that Hainanese Han cluster most closely with Singapore Chinese and Taiwan Han. However, other studies show that Hainanese genetically cluster closely with Guangxi and Guangdong Han Chinese.^[5]

Like Fujian and Guangdong provinces, Hainan has been a source for emigration. Towards the turn of the 20th century, many Hainanese migrated to various Southeast Asian nations, where they worked as cooks, restaurateurs, coffee shop owners, clothes makers, sailors and hoteliers, filling niches left unoccupied by previous groups of immigrants from China. The Hainanese were particularly successful in Thailand, where a large number of tycoons trace Hainanese origin, and in Cambodia, where they controlled the hotel and restaurant trade. They also formed a substantial proportion of Chinese communities in Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Malaysia. The outbreak of war with Japan prompted the departures of 33,000 persons in 1936 and 44,000 in 1937 from Hainan.^[6]

Overseas Hainanese have been a significant and particularly active source of remittances to China. This was done through specialized banks called "letter offices" (55 such banks were counted in 1937). The donations of overseas Hainanese helped to build schools, libraries and hospitals not just in their ancestral towns and villages, but also in Haikou, the provincial capital. Overseas Hainanese introduced rubber, pepper, pineapple, cocoa, palm oil and lemon grass to Hainan Island and ensured its commercial production there.^[7]

Main cities of Hainan island

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  Haikou city, photo of old Haikou
• 
  Wenchang city, photo of old Wenchang
• 
  Qionghai city
• 
  Wanning city

Hainanese assembly halls outside of China

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  Hainanese assembly hall in Johor Bahru
• 
  Hainanese assembly hall in Malacca
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  Hainanese assembly hall in Hoi An, Vietnam