For thousands of years, fishermen on Hainan Island have sought living inthe boundless sea where the wind and waves are highest and have formedtraditional fishing techniques and folk customs with unique characteristics of theSouth China Sea. Fishermen who lives on Sansha Yongxing Island,Zhaoshu Island and Ganquan Island are still using the fishing tools and craftsas well as studying the folk customs derived from their ancestors.

However, as time goes on, these traditional crafts and folk customs havegradually faded away because of various reasons until 2014, when the competent culturaldepartment of Hainan province organized experts to have a general investigationon intangible cultural heritages in Sansha City. These clues on culturalheritages which have unique oceanic features and represent the fishermen’ characteristicsof the South China Sea are compiled into a report, having attracted muchattention.

Unique geographical environments of Hainan Island have created two kindsof distinctive intangible cultural heritages, the mountainous and oceaniccharacteristics. Since 2005, the intangible cultural heritages with mountainouscharacteristics in Hainan province are the traditional textile dyeing crafts ofLi Nationality, folk music of Qiongzhong Li Nationality, bamboo and woodinstrumental musics of Li Nationality and so on, totally 21 items which havebeen listed in the national intangible cultural heritage protection list. Butthe oceanic intangible cultural heritages with long histories are yet little-known.

Therefore, a team of experts on intangible cultural heritage has spentmore than one year to visit several islands. Since the most of the fishermen inSansha live in Wenchang, Qionghai and Wanning, experts have gone to thehometowns of them to acquire the comprehensive and systematic relatedmaterials, basically understanding the distribution, traditional crafts andfolk customs of intangible cultural heritage resources in Sansha City.

For thousands of years, fishermen in Sansha have used traditional fishingcrafts to work. For these intangible cultural heritage clues, government shouldconvert and integrate it to the South China Sea cultural tourism as an islandculture according to the principle of “living culture protection” rather thanjust display the tools and objects at the museum. It can help the fishermen outof the outdated and inefficient production activity to participate in the modernservice and tourism industry on the island as well as to make efficientprotection and inheritance of these clues.

Date：2015.3.10

Source：Haikou Net