Baoping Village

Cultural heritage

Baoping Village lies in the Yazhou District of Sanya, about eight li south-west of the old Yazhou city walls; once called Bilan Village, it rose to fame in the Tang dynasty when the exiled chancellor Li Deyu settled there. Later settlers gathered to its north and renamed it Baoping, "keeping peace for generations." Its well-preserved cluster of Ming-and-Qing houses is a living continuation of southern-Hainan vernacular architecture; the village was named among the first batch of China's Traditional Villages and listed as a national-level historic-cultural village. It is the chief birthplace of the national ICH Yazhou folk songs, and the village's folk-song transmission centre carries a melody more than a thousand years old.

Visiting: Walking into Baoping Village, blue-brick, grey-tile Ming-and-Qing courtyards line the lanes, their carved lintels and volcanic-stone walls telling of old Yazhou's craft; in the transmission centre a long Yazhou melody carries one back to the songs of the fields and shore a thousand years ago. The ancient trees, old wells and venerable courtyards are where one touches the deepest layer of Sanya's cultural memory.