Li is the Chinese transcription of their native name, which is "Hlai". They are sometimes also known as the "Sai" or "Say". During China's Sui Dynasty, their ancestors were known by various names, including Lǐliáo, a general term encompassing several non-Han ethnic groups in Southern China. The name Li first is recorded during the Later Tang period.
History
The Hlai are believed to be descendants of the Rau people, Kra-Dai speaking tribes of ancient China, who settled on the island thousands of years ago. DNA analysis carried out amongst the modern Hlai population indicate a close relationship with populations in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi, most of them have Y-DNA O1a and O1b. During the Japanese occupation of Hainan, the Hlai suffered extremely heavily due to their communist resistance activities especially in the western Hainan. Hlai villages were frequently targeted for extermination and rape by Nationalist and Japanese soldiers. In four towns alone, the Japanese slaughtered more than 10,000 Hlai people. In another incident, Nationalist forces massacred over 7,000 Hlai in a village. Nationalist officers had 9,000 Hlai and 3,000 Miao executed after tricking them to the war fronts during a fake conscription campaign. As the Nationalists retreated with over 1.5 million civilians that they evacuated to the hills with, they massacred and stole food from the ethnic Hlai as well as other tribal peoples. The Nationalists executed 2,180 Miao women and children of Baisha and Baoting uprising origin. Tens of thousands of Hlai were also killed in Japanese labour camps, as unlike other Chinese civilians they and the Tanka were not evacuated by Chinese Nationalists to safety zones. Undercover Nationalist agents pretending to work for the Japanese observed how Japanese commanders gunned down thousands of Hlai while trying to escape the camp. They are held in high esteem by the Beijing government because they fought on the side of the CPC against Chinese Nationalist rule during the Chinese Civil War. Hainan Li-Miao Autonomous Prefecture was created in 1952. Ironically, the Hlai continued suffering far greater deaths than the rest of ethnic groups on the island as they were specifically subjected to violent and intensive collectivastion campaigns implemented on the Hlai by communists authorities that lead to widespread starvation deaths among the Hlai.
Language
The Hlai speak the Hlai languages, a member of the Kra–Dai language family, but most can understand or speak Hainanese and Standard Chinese. The language spoken natively by the Sai subgroup has been noted for its dissimilarity to the dialects or languages spoken by the other subgroups of the Hlai.
Culture
Among the Hlai, the women have a custom of tattooing their arms and backs after a certain age is reached. The Hlai play a traditional wind instrument called kǒuxiāo, and another called lìlāluó. The Hlai people were considered to be barbaric and primitive and were among the lower classes in Hainan. The Hlai in Wenchang assimilated into the local population and pretended to be Hainanese while most of the Hlai population was exterminated in most other parts of Hainan only a small portion of the Hlai survived and fled to the mountains where they still maintain a Hlai identity.
