About the Work

China: Hainan
S. Sturdevant

Hainan is China's newest province, having been separated from the provincial authority of Guangdong in the mid-1980s. It is an island north and west of Hong Kong, off the coast of Guizhou Province. Historically, peoples of Malay extraction---the Miao, Zhuang and Li---have populated Hainan. The migration route from Thailand, Malaysia to the Philippines, Indonesia and beyond flows through Hainan Island. A sizeable community of Hui (Muslim) peoples also lives on Hainan. Their roots go back some 2,500 years. Hainan is blessed with a number of natural mineral resources, old growth forests, coconut, copra, medicinal and edible plants, an extensive local fishing industry and, as current Chinese literature will tell you, beaches like Hawaii.

It is the provincial status and the categorizing of most of Hainan as viable export processing zones that occasioned the increased influx of Han Chinese and other foreigners to Hainan. Today, Hainan, like every other originally minority area of China, has a majority of Han Chinese residents. Sprawling cities with high-rise and hotel construction are to facilitate the transformation of Hainan into a viable set of export processing zones with the most liberal regulations in China. Developing these zones have brought disruption to traditional societies and structures with resultant social and economic concerns.

At the southern tip of Hainan, on the China Sea, is Sanya, the headquarters of the Chinese Navy for that area. Many nations in the region lay claim to the considerable deposits of deep-sea oil, found off the XiXia (Spratley) Islands to the east of Vietnam and north of The Philippines. Pne of their main missions of the navy headquartered at Sanya is to secure this sea and its oil for China.

The nature of Hainan society is rapidly changing. These photographs reflect some aspects of traditional societies of Hainan. A companion work would be Hainan in its modernization phase.