A documentary bout Li people

I am not a local from Hainan, but I grew up in Hainan and love this city. People here are nice, the scenery is beautiful and the food there is just wonderful.But I just realised that there is a group of special people live around me, and I just never tried to know more about the culture there. A shame it is. And I’m not the only one.
Li people are so special. I wondered why they have tattoos on only women’s body, why the house they live have the particular shape, how they sew to make so beautiful cloth with the simple wood machine. They have they have their own arts which are wonderful but dying. I had a trip to their living place for a day. Young Li people told me that they can hardly inherit these culture because it’s difficult and not everyone now can understand the language of the old people.
I weep for the excellent dying art and curious about the stories of the old Li people, Their stories must be as astonishing as films.

[@kkum_ooh]

as a hlai, l like this video very much! they seem like my grandmothers and actually we live in the same county🤣my grandma had told me bout her tattoos

[@yunanwang7251]

Thank you so much for the video! It's so good to hear from these people

[@alexandracheng5291]

I'm happy that you like it! I really wish more people can hear from them.

[@penand_paper6661]

Thank you for making this; not much of Li culture seems to be easily accessible in English; you've done us a great service. It was heartbreaking to hear Yang speak about the tattoos - I'm not sure how Hainan Chinese is supposed to sound, but her voice sounded like she wanted to cry. Which Li dialect is this, btw? Thank you.

[@alexandracheng5291]

Thanks for your comment, and sorry for late reply. Yang is from the Ha dialect. She is a very nice and kind person, she made me feel so warm.

[@jaanc8047]

@@alexandracheng5291 What town/village was Yang from? I want to locate her exact dialect.

[@samomanawat]

I came here to see if I, as a Thai, can understand anything? Turned out the only thing I can understand is the door knocking sound “Kok kok kok”

[@weifan9533]

That's because Hlai and Thai belong to different branches of the Tai-Kradai family, and the Hlai branch had been isolated on the island of Hainan for at least 3,500 years. Hlai preserved the native Austro-Tai numbers (the grandma in the video said she was married at the age of seventeen, fuet tou boux, where fuet means ten, tou means seven, and boux means year or age), whereas Thai adopted the Sinitic numbers.

[@somsaksompong689]

Water the same

[@billyb9067]

You can’t understand her but you can tell she is speaking a language close to Tai but they still have austronesian customs like face tattoos and they speak fully from their diaphragms especially herb they sing

[@obs58]

Like Rungus People sabah borneo

[@maxlai9137]

Greetings from Manipur formerly known as Lai Ram Land/Lai Lam land/Lai Pham Lel/Lai Pham/Tin Pham/Lai Lam/Tin Lam/Kang Lam/Tai Pong Paan/kangleipak etc.

[@Fromtheheart143]

What do you mean by the Lai Ram land and Lai people in MANIPUR, cus there is a Lai tribe in MIZORAM and in Chin state Myanmar, is there any relationship about it ??? And there's a saying that the Lai tribe here were to be related with the Li ethnic from the China ,.. and there's a lot of similarities

[@solo3785]

​​​@@Fromtheheart143 Lai= Ancient Meitei; Ram/Lam=Land; Land/lend/Ren= Great... Lairamland means the great land of Lais.Our ancestors were Lai so we still worshipped Lai.we originate from 9 Lai Pung-thou(Lai Pu thou) and it's seven kingdoms(Seven clans)...our origin start when we came out from the hole(khul) of kangla.

[@Fromtheheart143]

@@solo3785 even our origin is same ,... There's a saying that Lai people were once great , but it's just oral history, I don't surely believe it ,... And too I'm curious about what u said the Lai people and Lai from our state would be same or not 🤔 but there's alot of similarities then , even both ur language lies urder between tibeto Burman language... There need to be a research in this point

[@somsaksompong689]

The word "Voice" is the same as "sieng" in Thai and Lao.

[@AsianTurtleee]

They sound like Lao loum and Lao Esan.

[@xwtek3505]

Japanese people also happens to hate tattoos. Go figure

[@daile9724]

They are of Vietnam people ,they are very same Vietnamese. Hainan history have people vietnam go to live

[@baqikenny]

they were branched off one of the common larger tribes who were also austronesian ancestors to a lot of vietnamese people, and their first people have been on island for really really long time, since the neolitic period (earliest record), 1500BC-1900BC and way back. So you get the idea, Dao hai nam/ ɦai nam ɗao wasn't really china or vietnam at the time, it's even way earlier than foundation of Đông Sơn culture, everyone were just tribesmen and women... What were close to there was the supposedly the Văn Lang Hồng Bàng culture, those ancient people were one of the forefathers of nowadays vietnamese and southern chinese, but obviously you can't call them chinese or vietnamese lol, they don't speak the tongues today or act the way we do nor did the identity of chinese or vietnamese existed until hundreds of years later, in fact, you try traveling back in time to meet them, they might just try cooking you for food 😂

[@somsaksompong689]

Their language is subgroup of Taikadai not vietnamese

[@daile9724]

@@somsaksompong689 taikadai not Vietnam? You shound find infomation, ADN Vietnam same who

[@somsaksompong689]

@@daile9724 what are you talking about?

[@maylok3508]

these ladies look like my grandmother. it is such ashame that they are losing their tattoos. And really, they are speaking mandarin, or a close form of. Love their round faces. Reminds me of my grandma. And their dress sense was the same too. My guess is that the revolution really changed their entire community's way of life....

[@Jsj99332]

Vietnam​ = Austoasiatic​ cambodia​