Hainan people

The Hainan people (Chinese: 海南人 Hái-nâm nâng), Hainam people or Hainanese 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 colonists 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 peninsula and 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 colonists from northeastern Fujian began settling on the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan island, displacing Nanyue aborigines such as the Hlai, who moved to mountain areas.

In the main, Haikou city samples showed that modern Haikou city's 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, there are 2 million Hainamese in Thailand,^[6] as well as 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.^[7]

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.^[8]

Main cities of Hainan island

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

Hainanese assembly halls outside of China

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