From “Others” to “Citizens”

The boat people (" 疍民”, Dan Min), as an ethnic subgroup in southern China, had been represented as a " marginal group” in Chinese written history. With Hong Kong, Canton and Fuzhou becoming " treaty ports” after the Opium War, the boat people began to be reported in some print media, and therein the discourse stressing on cultural diversities, combined with the discrimination rooted in local tradition to intensify the building of their " others” image. Hundred Day’s Reform and the Revolution of 1911 enlightened the Chinese civil society and stimulated a mass of public debates on the ethnicity and human rights of the boat people, whose image gradually transformed to " citizens” in public narratives. On the other hand, the modern China folklore investigation within New Culture Movement accelerated a series of academic researches towards the boat people and produced abundant literatures, which to some extent constructed the ethnic boundaries between Dan Min and Han people.