SANYA, July 29. /TASS/. The village of Sanpai located in Hainan's Changjiang Li Autonomous County has become one of the regional centers of ethnic tourism. According to a local mews outlet, this settlement has become a "museum of culture of the Li people", the indigenous population of the island.
The ethnic village of Sanpai is located in a mountainous area covered with evergreen tropical forests and dotted with shallow rivers and streams. Recently, paintings have appeared on the facades of the buildings of this settlement, which depict local picturesque landscapes and everyday sketches from the life of the Li ethnic group, one of the national minorities living in China.
On the walls of houses, from the ground to the very roof, men and women in bright folk costumes are depicted, engaged in physical labor, cultural practices and training. "Before the eyes of a tourist who comes to Sanpai, vivid scenes from the life of the Li people immediately pop up: the inhabitants are busy with pottery, weaving, rice cleaning and other chores," the portal writes
Li People are the original inhabitants of Hainan. They are believed to be the descendants of the ancient Yue tribes of China. They speak the language of the same name, which belongs to the Tai-Kadai languages common in Indochina. In China, it is believed that the women of this ethnic group are skilled weavers. According to a legend, the creator of many textile techniques, famous in China, Huang Daopo, who lived in the 13-14 centuries, learned weaving on Hainan from local craftswomen.
In recent years, Hainan has been comprehensively developing the tourism industry, which plays an extremely important role in the province's economic development. About 60% of Hainan's gross regional product comes from the service sector. The Hainan administration attracts investments both in the traditional hotel industry and in the field of sports, agricultural and ethnocultural tourism. In 2019, the flow of tourists who visited the island increased by 9% and exceeded 83 million people. They spent about 105 billion yuan (about $ 15 billion). In 12 months, more than 1 million foreign travelers have visited the province, which is by 20% more than in 2018.