The Li ethnic minority has inhabited on 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.

History

Some 3,000 years ago, the Li people had already settled in 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.