Dānzhōu

The Dānzhōu are the Chinese-speaking people of north-western Hainan, centred on the old prefecture of Danzhou on Beibu Gulf. Their speech, the Danzhou dialect or Xianghua, is counted among the Yue languages: their ancestors migrated from Gaozhou and Wuzhou prefectures on the mainland, and the Yue speech they brought blended with the native tongue by the Tang, when the dialect took shape.

The Han first opened the area with the Dan'er commandery of 110 BC; the Tang made it Danzhou in 622, with its seat at Yilun. Between 1097 and 1100 the exiled poet Su Shi lived here teaching the classics, and later generations turned his residence into the Dongpo Academy.

Under the Song it became the Nanning military prefecture; the Ming restored the name Danzhou in 1369 and merged Yilun county into it in 1439, which the Qing kept.