HAIKOU, June 15. /TASS/. The Chinese authorities have included the song folklore of Hainan's Danjia subethnos in the list of national intangible cultural heritage, reported the Sanya Daily.
The creativity of this social stratum of hereditary fishermen is closely connected with the sea and is called "xianshuige" ("songs of salty waters"). Danjia have preserved a number of cultural traditions rooted in antiquity. Their songs cover a fairly wide range of topics, including religious matters.
This time, songs of representatives of the Danjia who live in Sanya on the southern coast of Hainan were included in the list of objects of China's intangible heritage. This is not the first time this resort city has been associated with the honorary list: before that, the Chinese authorities included 13 other cultural heritage sites of national and provincial importance in it. Among them are musical works of small national minorities - Li (autochthonous population) and Miao (descendants of the military contingent of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), who settled on the island about 400 years ago), as well as Hui - Muslims, whose ancestors came from Persia or countries of the Arab East during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), as well as more than a thousand years ago from the now non-existent state of Champa (Central Vietnam).
Danjia live in the south and southeast of China. Most of them are engaged in sea fishing and constantly live on fishing boats, changing their anchorage depending on the season. In recent decades, many representatives of this subethnos have moved to the coastal strip, practically merging with the local population. There are a number of places on Hainan where quite numerous groups of this special social stratum of Chinese society have lived, preserving the way of life of their ancestors.