Hainan Xincun Port Travel Notes: The Dan Family’s Life on the Water

On the 110th day of our RV trip, we saw a village on the sea at Sinchon Port.

Small wooden houses are densely floating on the wide harbor. The hospital, police station, hotel, and residences on the ship are all available...

There are many "boats" in the port. One yuan can get you to the other side, and fifty yuan can charter a boat to visit the entire maritime village.

Surrounding the house are floating cages of similar size, arranged in a well-field pattern and surrounded by wooden blocks. These cages are called "fishing rafts", plus the cages in the distance are inserted into the shallows. The bamboo fences cultivated in the upper enclosure and their reflections on the water make the entire Xincun Port look like a waterside pastoral.

The fishermen who have made boats their home on this sea for generations are the "Dan family" who make a living by farming the sea.

They have come to Hainan from the mainland since the Qin and Han dynasties. They are good at fishing and plowing the sea. They use boats as houses and move around during the fish and shrimp flood season.

They make boats their home, move with the sea, and put all their joys and sorrows on a small boat.

Like other villages, there is actually WIFI and TV here, and it is brightly lit at night. The only difference is that it is blocked by the sea, making it a bit more mysterious under a bay of clear water. Where do they come from and why do they live at sea?

The written meaning of the Dan family is people who make Dan their home, and the Dan family is shaped like an egg. The ships of the Dan family are shaped like egg shells floating on the sea, hence the name. However, the Dan family themselves believe that they have struggled with wind and waves all year round and their lives are difficult to protect. They are as fragile as eggshells, so they are called the Dan family.

The history of the Dan family can be traced back to the Ancient Yue people of the Qin and Han Dynasties. According to legend, as early as the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the Dan family from Fujian and Guangdong rowed across the turbulent Qiongzhou Strait and headed south along the east coast of the South Island until the end of the sea, which is now Sanya. And settled here, thus forming today's Hainan Dan family.

As for the origin of the Dan family, the academic community has not yet reached a conclusion. Most researchers believe that the Dan family are people who originally lived in Baiyue. Historian Luo Xianglin believes that the "water people" are descendants of the Yue ethnic group. However, the Dan people are not necessarily a pure ethnic group, and may have merged with different groups of people in different periods of history.

Nowadays, time has passed, and the lives of the Dan family have also undergone earth-shaking changes. More and more young people have landed ashore, worked and lived ashore, built houses, married wives and had children on the shore. Some young people have gone to college after being admitted to college. Having stayed in the big city, their generation is leading a new life of the Dan family as "fish and shrimp learn to walk ashore".

Being able to get up close to the lives of the Dan family, feel their different lives, and experience different folk customs, this is the charm of sojourn life.