For two millennia Hainan was where subversive officials were exiled to, so it's littered with historically significant sites, such as Temple of Five Lords (a memorial to five shunned bureaucrats) and the Tomb of Hai Rui.
A Full and complete Map of China (PRC) identifying all Language Areas big and small in all Provinces and Autonomous Regions of China.
Map includes Turkic Languages (Uygur, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Salar & Uzbek), Mongolian Language and Sub-Divisions (Mongol, Tu, Daur and Dongxian), Tungusic Peoples (Oroqen, Evenki and Xibe) and Languages, Korean, Tajik (Tadzhik), Mon-Khmer (Kawa + Puman (or Pulang)), Hui, Uygur (Uighur), Tibeto-Bhurman Languages, Tai and Miao, Yao and She' Language Area's and Borders. Main Area's and sub-divisions of Han Languages (Northern Mandarin, Eastern Mandarin, South-Western Mandarin and Cantonese) further included. This color-coded ethno-linguistic Map (of 1967 AD) identifies at a glance most ethnic minority regions in China
Map China Ethno-Linguistic / Language Distribution China
The current administrative arrangements for Hainan Island date to the year 1984 AD when the Hainan Administrative Area was founded. Not satisfied with this status, not much later Hainan was proclaimed a seperate Province of China (P.R.C.), disconnecting it from coastal Guangdong Province and establishing Haikou City as the Islands modern capital. In coordination, expressing the special development plans for the Island, Hainan was proclaimed a Special Economic Zone aiming to speed up its commercial and economic development on toe with nearby Hong Kong and Macau (SAR's).
In April of 2001 AD, Hainan Island, still remote and relatively unvisited and untouched by outsiders suddenly made it into the world headlines as a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane was forced to make an emergency landing on the Lingshui Military Airfield on Hainan Island. The incident occurred immediately after the reconnaisance plane had collided with an armed Chinese J-8 fighter jet sent to intercept it.
The Chinese jet subsequently went
down killing its pilot, whereas The EP-3 Aries, a large electronic surveillance aircraft with a crew of 24, landed at Lingshui Air Base of Lingshui Li Autonomous County on the Chinese island of Hainan after the collision, leading an immediate full blown international diplomatic incident. Although eventually the crew, and even the airplane were returned to their rightful owners, the Chinese side came away with unprecendented opportunities to have a look at the sophisticated technologies in use with the American Navy and Intelligence and the incident is still widely and frequently remembered today.
On May 4 of the year 2008, the first leg of the mainland China part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Torch relay started in the city of Sanya on the southernmost point of Hainan Island. The torch relay started from Phoenix Island in the south-east of Sanya Prefecture to follow a 30 kilometer pathway along famous scenic spots such as Crown of Beauty Center, Haiyue Square along Sanya Bay and Haihong Square to end at Tianya Haijiao Scenic Spot. The last two torch bearers were Kung Fu and Film Star Jackie Chan and a local village head named Pu Huifang.
Finally, in 1948, just before the Communist 'liberation' of China's mainland, Qiongyadao became The Hainan Special Administrative Area under the direction of the State Administrative Council.
In that same year Hainan Island would become one of the last refuges for the dwindling and fleeing Kuomintang Armies then cornered by the last final offensive of the communist side in the second Civil War, leading to heavy fighting and bombardments of the Island. According to official (communist) records the Island was 'liberated' from Kuomintang control in early 1950 AD.
From March to May 1950, the so-called Landing Operation on Hainan Island captured the island for the Chinese communists. The little underground army of communist guerrilla fighters already established on Hainan for years played an essential role in scouting for the landing operation and coordinated their own offensive from their jungle bases on the island. This allowed the Hainan takeover to be successful where the Jinmen and Dengbu military assaults had failed in the previous fall (1949 AD).
The takeover was made possible by the presence of a local guerrilla force that was lacking on Jinmen, Dengbu, and Taiwan. Hence, while many observers of the Chinese civil war thought that the fall of Hainan to the Communists would be followed shortly by the fall of Taiwan, the lack of any Communist guerrilla force on Taiwan and its sheer distance from the mainland made this impossible, as did the arrival of the US 7th fleet in the Taiwan Strait after the outbreak of the Korean War in June of 1950, another action provoked by Mao and the Communist Party.
The new Communist China, the P.R.C., created in October of 1949 AD, yet again changed administrative rules for the Island. Thus, what was known as the Hainan Administrative Office was established in 1951. Subsequently, the ethnic minorities present on the Island were awarded their nominal autonomy, by means of the creation of the Hainan Li and Miao Autonomous Region, which was founded in 1952. This name was revised into the title 'Hainan Li and Miao Nationalities
Prefecture' in 1955 AD. There are three ethnic groups on the Island, the majority of whom are the Li and Miao ethnic groups. Ethnic minority groups of Hainan Island are the Li People , Miao, and the Min People. The Li reside mainly in the central and southern regions of the Island.
As early as in May 1951, Hainan was targeted at the behest of U.S. Naval Intelligence for RAF (i.e. British) surveillance overflights, using Spitfire PR Mk. 19s based at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. This sea area includes the South China Sea Islands, which are claimed by the PRC and several other countries. It is one of the most strategically sensitive areas in the world.
In the period of political upheavals between 1957 AD and 1979 AD, which includes the Cultural Revolution Era, Hainan Island was one of the remote destinations where declared enemies of the people, many of whom wrongfully accused on drummed up charges, were sent for political re-education. Several forced labor camps, known euphemistically as May the 7Th Cadre Schools, were located on the Island. Inside such camps, China's intellectuals, deemed counter-revolutionary, bourgeois-revisionist, capitalist roaders and enemies of the people were dumped after their earlier interrogations, generally involving various forms of torture were dumped, out of sight of the main stream of society. One inside the camps, the prisoners were supposedly to learn from the pure socialist attitude of the true people, the nations illiterate and unsophisticated peasants while performing labor useful to the state. Re-education consisted of studying the now enshrined 'Mao Zedong Thought', participating in so called struggle sessions and the writing of self-criticisms until one died, chose suicide or was finally released. Altogether, considering the other options of isolation in West-Gansu's deserts, struggling for life in the cold, frost and starvation of camps in border area's in Heilongjiang, or work on railways on the Qinghai Plateux, being sent to Hainan was considered not that much of a disaster, a blessing in disguise if you will. At least one stood a reasonable chance of survival. It seems most that went there lived to see their release afterwards.
Counter-revolutionary Movements, as political crackdowns on opponents of the regime were dubbed, and later further political crackdowns and actions against anyone with a disenting view that may threaten the solid rule of the Communist Party and its greedy cadres wre frequent occurrences in the new and increasingly totalitarian state formed from the Communist take-over. The Cultural Revolution however, was an especially violent and unpredicatble period in modern Chinese History. The chaos of this specific political movement would surpass all others, its anarchy, hystery and unfortunatly damage and destruction carried natiowide by the so-called Red Guards, who were by and large politically naieve, overzealous youngsters, so-called students, who were mass manipulated into rampaging the nation and its bureaucracy, its culture and history and finally eachother and themselves, all in the name of Mao Zedong and his supposedly brilliant thoughts.
Interestingly, today many historians hold the view that the Cultural Revolution movement may have been inevitable, however, that the political start of it was marked by the appearance and then banning of an Opera play inspired on none other than Hai Rui, the Ming Dynasty Official, who had been so unjustly removed from his office and discredited.
The showing of this Opera play had far reaching consequences, likely much beyond the original intent of the writer, the mayor of Beijing, --. Not only did the writer suffer, so did Hainan and even the entire Nation. Taken as an affront to the Leadership and person of Mao, political measures in the form of a severe nationwide crackdown were the immediate result.
The Cultural Revolution is often seen as a battle between Mao Zedong, and several members of the upper strata of the Communist Party, who had seen the dire consequences of Mao Zedong's earlier work, most notably the three year famine of 1958 AD through 1961 AD, and had taken out to block his intentions of arming the nation at the expensive of tens of millions of peasant lives and the complete livelyhood of most others. In this scenario, the clash between the giants of the leadership was inevitable, and arrangements for the political crackdown already prepared by Mao Zedong and his stooges well before the publishing of the Hai Rui play. The staging of the play was merely an opportunity to start the latest campaign against the opposition. The Cultural Revolution was a political move created by Mao Zedong to overthrow his second, Liu Shaoqi, who represented the strongest oppositional faction at the top in Beijing. Thus, not by chance, the writer of the play was a staunch if not model Liu Shaoqi supporter, the mayor of Beijing --.
Whichever the backgrounds, the Hai Rui Opera play, to say the least, was an explosive piece. To understand its full meaning, one needs to known the general story line of the life of Hai Rui as described above. The play then, in short, reads as follows...
>>>> coming soon !!
While the Nation combatted one another in heated but pointless political discussions, attacks, mass denouncements, mass beatings and frequently - even murder, the populace on Hainan remained relativily calm. Although the Red Guards had been granted free train transport so that they may clense the Nation from the annoying party bureacracy that had dared annoy Mao Zedong (and interfere with his plans to build China into a nuclear armed superpower) to its farthest corners, there was only a ferry down to the Island at the time. Not many Red Guards managed to reach Hainan in order to create chaos. Thus, the population lived in relative ease and calm, removed from the turbulent mainstream of society. However, not all the youth on the Island remained that passive. In an act that may be described as 'Killing the Messenger twice over', the mobs of Red Guards eventually they raided the Tomb Of Hai Rui near Haikou, and largely destroyed it.
The Confucian values of Old China had been under attack since the May the 4Th of 19191 AD Movement that layed the foundation for, among things, the Communist Party of China. During the Cultural Revolution, the 'Campaign against the 4 Olds', when the anything relating to the wrongful Feudal past was discredited, attacked and destroyed renewed the aggression against symbols of Confucianism helped seal the fate of the Hai Rui tomb. Confucianist values had been on the downturn since 1919 AD, but it was the Cultural Revolution that finally discarded all of it, the last bits of Confucian thought and values lost in the factional violence, murder and loss of innocence suffered in the Cultural Revolution movement.
As it is, the newly arising China is still struggling to revive some of the past values to make up for the gaping moral gap left as Mao Zedong's real legacy for China, leaving a land without real values, only empty, lying communist slogans and, often unrealistic, ideals.
On October 8Th of 2010 during heavy tropical storms and the worst rainfall since the year 1961 AD, large swaths of Hainan Island were flooded. Within hours some 350 thousand Hainan Island citizens faced a threat of extensive flooding while the tropical storms raged on.
Although the Government immediatly took measures to control the damage and safe the endangered villages, it could not prevent a dam-burst of the Chizhi Reservoir in Wenchang City Prefecture which trapped 6,137 residents in nine villages of Huiwen and Wencheng townships.
In total well over 350.000 Hainan citizens were temporarily displaced by the unusual down-pours. One person was reportedly found dead, where 3 others went missing.
The downpours, which started on Sept. 30, had already caused 1.13 billion yuan in economic losses when another week of rain forced more evacuations.
History of Hainan (海南) Province (5) Hainan during the Peoples Republic
Chinese Propoganda Poster from the Cultural Revolution, extolling the Great Powers of Mao Zedong and his revolutionary Thought, as expressed through Mao's 'little red book' and other teachings.
