Before the 20th century, Vietnamese fishermen called the island Vo Thuy - 'no water.' The name was accurate and absolute. There was no freshwater spring, no reliable well, nothing to sustain permanent human life on this low scrap of sedimentary rock sitting almost exactly halfway between Haiphong and Hainan in the Gulf of Tonkin. Fishermen sheltered behind it during monsoons and moved on. The Chinese knew it as Nightingale Island. Neither name suggested anyone would fight over it. But geography has a way of creating value where none seems to exist, and an island positioned precisely between two nations becomes, by that positioning alone, enormously important.
In Vietnamese, Bach Long Vi means 'Tail of the White Dragon,' a name borrowed from a peninsula in what is now Fangchenggang, Guangxi, China. The connection traces to the 1887 French-Qing Convention, which drew a line through the Gulf of Tonkin and placed the island on the Vietnamese side of the meridian at 108 degrees 03 minutes East Greenwich. France administered it as part of French Indochina's Annam Protectorate. But the transfer was never clean. Chinese maps published well into the 1930s - including Goode's World Atlas by Rand McNally - continued to show the island as Chinese territory. Foreign scholars regarded it as China's at least through 1950, when it was handed over to Vietnam under circumstances that remain a source of diplomatic tension. Among Hainan fishermen, it was simply Fushui Isle - the 'pearl floating on water.' Everyone saw the same rock. Everyone told a different story about who owned it.
Around 1920, someone discovered a freshwater well on the island's southern end. This single geological accident transformed Bach Long Vi from a temporary storm shelter into a place where people could live. By August 1921, a resident of Giap Nam village in Co To county had applied to cultivate the island's lowland areas. The French protectorate took notice, ordering patrol boats from Co To to visit at least once a year.
In 1937, Emperor Bao Dai's government sent twelve soldiers to garrison the island and established a village government, complete with a village chief. Three residential clusters grew on the southern coast - 75 to 80 houses, about 200 people, making a living from fishing and small-scale farming. Fishing boats from Cat Ba Island registered each September for the seasonal run to Bach Long Vi's southern waters. Most of the catch went back to Cat Ba, with some sold locally and a smaller portion traded to Hainan. Abalone was the prize - Chinese merchants bought it for resale to Guangdong until Vietnamese authorities restricted the trade, insisting the harvest stay within Vietnam.
Bach Long Vi's real significance lies not in what sits on its surface but in what its existence does to a map. Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an island generates its own exclusive economic zone - a radius of maritime territory extending 200 nautical miles. For a speck of land positioned midway across the Gulf of Tonkin, this mathematical fact has enormous consequences.
Vietnam naturally argues that Bach Long Vi should carry its full weight in any equidistant line dividing the Gulf. China has an interest in minimizing the island's impact - arguing perhaps that it fails to qualify as a true island under UNCLOS provisions, or that its effect on boundary calculations should be discounted. But China controlled the island before the 1950s handover and claimed it was inhabited, making it difficult to now argue the island is insignificant. The paradox is elegant: the more either side has valued Bach Long Vi historically, the harder it becomes to dismiss its importance in the present.
Despite its geopolitical weight, Bach Long Vi remains a small and ecologically rich place. The island and surrounding waters harbor 1,490 documented species of plants and animals: 367 species of terrestrial plants, 94 species of coral, 451 species of marine fish, and 17 species of mangroves. Storks, turtle doves, drongos, and purple swamphens pass through during migration season, protected by local authorities who recognize the island's role as a waypoint on flyways spanning thousands of kilometers.
Twenty-eight species found here are classified as rare, threatened, or endangered, including two terrestrial plants in the genus Magnolia and eight vertebrate species. Rorqual whales move through the surrounding waters. But the island's distance from the mainland also makes it a convenient base for offshore fishing, and marine resources near its shores face constant pressure from over-harvesting and destructive fishing practices. Conservation and extraction compete daily in these waters, as they do across much of the South China Sea - a region where what lies beneath the surface matters as much as the flags that fly above it.
Bach Long Vi Island sits at approximately 20.13N, 107.73E in the Gulf of Tonkin, roughly equidistant between Haiphong (Vietnam) and Hainan Island (China). The island is very small - only about 3 sq km of land area - and sits low in the water, composed of Oligocene-era sedimentary rocks. From altitude, it appears as a flat, vegetated speck surrounded by open sea. The nearest major airport is Cat Bi International Airport (VVCI) in Haiphong, approximately 110km to the west. Haikou Meilan International (ZJHK) on Hainan is roughly the same distance to the east. The Gulf of Tonkin is typically warm and humid with reduced visibility from haze, particularly in summer months. Expect commercial shipping traffic and fishing vessels in the surrounding waters. The island has no significant airport or airstrip.