Two small encounters during my stay in Sanya have left me with profound thoughts about this land’s past. When I first arrived at Yazhou Bay Station, an elderly local man with a thick native accent gave me a ride to my residence. He was a descendant of Fujian migrants who settled in Hainan during the Ming Dynasty. A week after settling here, I bought a second-hand bicycle from a local Li ethnic resident. I chatted for a long time with his second-grade daughter. Though born and raised in Li heritage, the little girl spoke fluent Mandarin yet could only utter one or two fragmented Li phrases.
Today’s Sanya is a bustling coastal city filled with crowds and coastal glamour, yet few people recall that the Li people are the earliest indigenous inhabitants of this land. For thousands of years, the Li tribes lived off the mountains and seas, farming and fishing in self-sufficiency, thriving alone across the entire island. As continuous waves of outsiders migrated in, the flat, fertile coastal plains were gradually occupied and developed. The Li people slowly withdrew from prosperous coastal areas and retreated deep into the island’s mountainous hinterlands.
The urban prosperity and coastal beauty we admire today are essentially built upon the gradual concessions of indigenous communities. The transformation of this land reveals a hidden rule throughout human history: nearly all island indigenous peoples are destined to lose their living space and decline from masters of their land to marginalized groups.
This is not unique to Hainan. Taiwan’s indigenous Gaoshan tribes retreated into mountains, Japan’s Ainu people nearly vanished, New Zealand’s Māori were displaced and marginalized, and Scotland has long been suppressed by dominant ethnic groups. Across regions and eras, the retreat and cultural silencing of vulnerable native communities is a recurring theme in the evolution of human civilization.
People often attribute such changes to geographical limitations and civilizational renewal. Yet beneath historical surface lies an eternal core: the game of human nature.
Indigenous civilizations thrive on harmony with nature and peaceful, stable settlement, cherishing their homeland and pursuing generational tranquility. In contrast, incoming expansionist civilizations are driven by possession, plunder, and exploitation. Islands feature enclosed terrain and limited resources with no room for buffer. The peaceful contentment of native dwellers can never resist the aggressive ambition of expansionist forces. This is never a matter of civilized superiority or inferiority, but a pure reflection of human desire projected upon land and resources.
Essentially, all human civilization is a history of expansion by the strong and retreat by the weak. Gaps in military power, productivity, and institutional systems empower the desires of dominant groups, making the sacrifice of vulnerable peoples a normal price for so-called “progress”. This oppression involves not only territorial seizure but also the deprivation of cultural discourse and collective memory.This is vividly embodied in the Li children of Sanya. Their native language is fading, and their millennia-old cultural heritage is gradually diluted and forgotten amid the tides of modernization. Fortunately, the natural barrier of mountains and seas has protected indigenous communities like the Li, Taiwanese Gaoshan, and Māori from complete extinction, allowing them to preserve precious cultural legacies and ethnic roots.
In stark contrast, Native American tribes had no such fortune of geographical shelter. The flat, open plains of North America offered no natural defense against the suppression, displacement, and forced assimilation of dominant colonial civilizations. Their social structures nearly collapsed, their ancient cultural roots were severed, and their communities almost vanished entirely from history.
This reveals the true law of civilizational survival: passive conservation and blind retreat inevitably lead to cultural dilution and oblivion. Civilization is never static. Only through active communication, inclusiveness, and continuous innovation can cultures endure long-term. Isolation and conservatism inevitably result in elimination. Mutual exchange, learning, and co-prosperity represent the eternal path for the continuity of human civilization.