Yang Xiaoliu, a girl who had been living in a shantytown in Sanya, looks at her home that was demolished by the government prior to the traditional Spring Festival holiday.

The government of Sanya, the seaside city in South China's Hainan province, started the demolition of its biggest shantytown ahead of the Spring Festival, leaving many inhabitants homeless.

The area, the biggest slum in the tropical city that has become a popular tourist destination, had 308 households and a population of more than 2,000, Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.

The city government started the forced demolition of the shantytown on Jan 19 with bulldozers and forklifts, the report said.

The shanties, mostly simple wood shacks, served as both pigsties and people's homes.

Most people who lived in the shanties were farmers from the rural areas of the province. They started to move there in the 1990s and raised pigs to earn a living, which earned them a better life than farming.

When reporters visited the shantytown during the Spring Festival holiday, many residents still lived there, despite the fact that their homes had been torn down.

"We don't have a place to live in our home village. If they completely demolish here, we will be homeless," Chen Zugao, a resident in the area, was quoted as saying.