Qióng

The Qióng are the Han Chinese people of Hainan who speak Qiongzhou speech, also called Hainanese, a Min variety known as the Qiong–Wen group. Its heartland is northern and eastern Hainan around Qiongshan and Wenchang, whose speech is traditionally the prestige form. The Tang-dynasty prefecture of Qiongzhou, centered on Qiongshan, gives the culture its name.

Their language descends from Southern Min: refugees from the wars that ended the Song in 1279 moved south through Chaoshan and the Leizhou Peninsula into Hainan.

Long contact with the island's Li peoples and official Mandarin reshaped its sounds, leaving Hainanese unintelligible with the Hokkien of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou and producing implosive initials unknown in mainstream Min. Under the Ming and Qing the island belonged to Guangdong, and traders and settlers carried the dialect to the ports of Southeast Asia.