Li Village

At our hotel in Sanya, the extremely kind Sophia offered to put us in touch with Mr. Li. This young father lives in Shuiman and is a member of the Li ethnic group, an agrarian people with a population of 1.2 million. More than 90% of the Li people live on Hainan Island and the majority of them in the tropical paradise in and around Wuzhishan mountain. This rich fertile land produces most of China's tropical crops including: coconut, lemon grass, cocoa, coffee, rubber, cashew, pineapple, mango and bananas.

You can read more about the Li people here.

After arriving at our hotel we decided to call Mr. Li to arrange to meet him the next day. This was especially interesting since our rudimentary Chinese is greatly aided by facial and hand gestures that are impossible to do while on the phone. But I gave it a try. Somehow we got across who we are and that we wanted to meet him and somehow we understood that he would pick us up the next day at 8:00am.

After a dinner of amazing country grown vegetables, Chinese chicken noodle soup and some wicked mushrooms we passed out and were awoken at 7:00 by the morning broadcast of the news. This is very common in small villages across China, and Shuiman was no exception. Every morning and evening the news blasts out of megaphones strategically placed so that their morning report can also double as an alarm clock for the entire village. So at 7:00 we were up and at em. I felt like I was at summer camp again.

Mr. Li picked us up with his 6 year old son and drove us through the windy mountain roads while his son tried his best to act uninterested. He did a terrible job and kept looking back at us under his cap smiling and giggling. We listened to cheesy 80's Chinese pop music on the way and we struggled to find the words to explain who we were, where we were from and what we were doing. Although the basics were becoming easier.

I have only recently returned to my hobby as a photographer and have a lot to learn. Taking pictures of people is very difficult for me and I often feel obtrusive or uncomfortable especially in intimate situations like visiting peoples homes. We arrived at the village very early and the villagers were still finishing breakfast, cleaning up, brushing their teeth. Although it looks abandoned, there were plenty of people there I just did feel confident enough to photograph them.

The pictures below are a mix of mine and Mr. Xavier's photos. We were less shy with the pigs...