Dadonghai Beach, Hainan Island |
My hotel pool at Dadonghai |
Dadonghai sunset |
I stayed in a hotel overlooking Dadonghai beach in the eastern part of Sanya city. The beach was always crowded with vacationers, most of them Chinese, sitting under beach umbrellas supplied by the modern resorts lining the beach. Along the beach is an assortment of seaside entertainments: parasailing, scuba diving, jet skiing, paddleboating, sailing, powerboating. It felt more like Miami Beach than the People’s Republic of China but I loved being by the sea, on a warm, tropical beach.
My favorite feature of Dadonghai was the seafood. Outdoor restaurants all over Sanya sell live seafood out of tanks with constantly circulating seawater: clams and cockles and crabs of several types, scallops, oysters, shrimp, spiny lobsters, sea urchins, pompano, puffer fish, groupers and other fish species I couldn’t identify; even cuttlefish, skates, and moray eels. I wondered what a moray eel tastes like but wasn’t curious enough to pony up the $20 a kilo to find out.
Live seafood tanks |
Your choice of a meal is netted out of a tank and -- if a fish -- dispatched unceremoniously by being bashed on the pavement before it is carried off to the kitchen. A few minutes later dinner appears. It’s not cheap: shrimp run 45 RMB or about $7 a kilo, shrimp about $8, and a decent-size fish can cost the equivalent of $30. But the fish restaurants, most owned by people from China’s northern provinces, were always crowded with free-spending Chinese visitors.
Seafood dinner |
Hainan is also known for its vast assortment of tropical fruit, not only the predictable mangos and papayas but dragon fruit, star fruit, jack fruit, custard apple, aumand, pitaya, a hairy red fruit called simply hong mao dan or “red hair” fruit, something called “mountain bamboo” that looks like a big acorn, and lianwu, a small, crunchy fruit shaped like a bell.
Fruit stand |
Then the place itself is crowded, and the return bus trip can be a nightmare since so many people want to leave at the same time. My first out of town trip was to the Nanshan temple, 25 miles west of town. I had no difficulty getting a bus there, but when I was ready to head back there was massive line of people waiting for the one city bus to Sanya.
Nanshan warning |
Meanwhile, those who’d remained in line were ushered on to the appropriate bus. Still, there was pushing and shoving there as well. One elderly man trying to get on the bus was repeatedly shoved aside until I got fed up and, as the tallest person on hand, barred others’ way so he could get on. The policeman, standing on the bus’s top step, said to me, in English, “Thank you.”
Nanshan Bodhisattva |
Nanshan was a bit of a frost: there was a $20+ admission cost to what’s called a “Buddhist preaching site,” but the Buddhist temple is a 1998 creation full of dubious replicas and “treasures” such as a Guanyin statue said to contain 100 kilos of gold and silver and 120 carats of South African diamonds. The grounds are nice but unspectacular; they face on a beach that has a giant contemporary statue, also of the Guanyin Bodhisattva. A stone leading to the beach offers to visitors the wise warning, “For your safety, please don’t go to sea,” presumably meaning “No Swimming.” The place is an example of the manufactured “tourism zones” cropping up around the country, aimed at Chinese tourists.
Barbecuing fish, Yalong Bay |
Another day I visited Five Finger Mountain, outside the city of Wuzhishan. The bus route runs beside the long Sanya beach, lined with elaborate resorts, each trying to outdo the other in feats of postmodern architectural exuberance. My favorite example was Dadonghai’s Bao Hong hotel with its “International Club,” a neo-classical dome at one end and bas-relief panels putatively depicting minority folk tales at the other.
Postmodern neoclassical international Chinese ethnic minority architecture |
My last out of town visit was to Tianya-Haijiao “Scenic Area,” also west of Sanya, another tourist trap touted as “the most romantic tropical paradise of China.” For foreigners, the advertising hype for Tianya-Haijiao, meaning “edge of the sky, rim of the sea,” is almost more interesting than the place itself: Miss World contests have been held there, along with the “New Silk Road Model Contest” and the “International Wedding Festival.” For Chinese people, it has significance as “the end of the earth,” where lovers are prepared to go to meet each other. Next to it was another park which identified itself as “Sanya Greatest World of Love.”
Tianya-Haijao, the end of the world |
Most of my time, though, I stayed in Dadonghai, swam in the hotel pool or walked on the beach. One afternoon I visited Sanya’s long, hard sand beach -- uncrowded, spacious, shaded by palm trees and used by local people while tourists jam Dadonghai’s smaller beach -- and inspected its waterfront, wondering if the wealthy in China have taken up boating. Indeed yachts are anchored in the harbor, but most have the logos of companies, and are perhaps intended for company outings or rental.
Sanya Beach |
I was going home from downtown Wuhan on a bus last night around dinner time when the driver stopped the bus, hopped off and went into a small restaurant. He took his time, scrutinizing each item while the bus chugged, gurgled and beeped and his passengers waited patiently. No one grumbled at being kept waiting, everyone understood. It was dinner time. My favorite bakery in Dadonghai sold a pastry which boasted on its label that it was “baked to the music of Mozart.” One day I developed a craving for potato chips, but the only potato chips available in Sanya – Lay’s at that – were in flavors: Blueberry, French Chicken, Cucumber and … Lamb.
Yachts in Sanya harbor |
Five finger mountain and rice paddies |