Rambling around my ancestral Hainan

Page 371 – 418

Chapter 12  
West Coast - From Changjiang
Li Autonomous County To Danzhou
 

About fifty-five kilometres northeast of Dongfang town is Shilu (now Changjiang; 昌江黎族自治县), the site of China’s largest open-cast iron ore mine.  During the Second World War, this mine was exploited by the Japanese, whose prisoners were coerced to extract its ores as well as build a railway line from the inland hill to the coastal Basuo port for transportation.  Its proven reserves of more than two hundred and sixty million tons of ores with an average iron content of fifty-one percent also contain cobalt and copper.  Verified cobalt deposit tallies at more than thirteen thousand tons.  Cobalt is used to strengthen steel plates of aeroplanes, missiles, and tanks.  An iron-and-steel factory to manufacture steel has been planned for Shilu.

Hainan has other ore deposits like aluminium, brown coal, gold, lead, manganese, oil shale, uranium, and zirconium.  Beneath its eastern coast are at least one billion tons of titanium ore.  Titanium alloys are used extensively for manufacturing aircraft engines and frames.  Interestingly, large deposits of lignite and oil shale have also been discovered.  Off-shore in the surrounding sea is oil and natural gas reserves.

Leaving the Dongfang station with only a few passengers, the bus routed for Shilu crawls along the main Donghai Road for thirty minutes, picking up people waiting patiently by its kerbs.  With twenty-two passengers (including a boy of eight and three babies), it turns into another road (Jiulong and Dongfang Avenue), attracting six more scrambling passengers.  Now carrying a profitable load of thirty fare-payers and three babies, it speeds off at eleven-fifteen, travelling along 435 Road (also known as 225 National Road).

In green T-shirt and jeans, a short and fairly tanned local lady of about twenty-eight sits on the platform behind the driver.  Cuddling her baby, she faces me and the other passengers in comfortable seats.  Halfway through the trip, she unhesitatingly lifts the right side of her T-shirt to breast-feed her six-month old baby.  She has probably done this so often that her action emerges spontaneously, without any hint of hesitation or doubt.  Although seeing me occasionally stealing a glance at her, she manifests neither embarrassment nor indignation.  I am amazed by her moral innocence.  But I am also ashamed of my lack of it, gazing at her small firm breast.  No one else is offended, no murmur or protest.  The moral complexities of the developed world have not yet afflicted her or them.  She politely declines when I offer to swap seats.  

 Prisoners of war, tears in Shilu Iron Mine

(石碌铁矿)
 
After an hour and a half, the bus reaches Shilu Bus Terminal along the main Renmin North Road.  This road is very busy with cars picking up and dropping off passengers and pedestrians walking or shopping among the roadside stalls.  All kinds of items are on sale.  Fruits like berries, longans, mangoes, pears, pineapples, and jackfruit are the main goods.  Clothing and drinks are the next best-sellers.  A gentleman approaches.  He is perhaps a cab driver.  I politely tell him that I am looking into the hotel ahead.  It is only two hundred metres away.

Hong Jun Hotel (鸿俊宾馆, which subsequently ceased operation) is almost at the corner of Renmin North Road and Dongfeng Road.  Its rate is comparable to the rates at Longquan in Haikou and Longyuan in Wenchang.  I check in, before proceeding for lunch.  A café serving cheap ready-cooked food is around the corner at Dongfeng Road.  A tin plate of rice, an omelette, a small fried fish, and a small plate of vegetables cost less than 15 RMB.

Some cab drivers are milling around the bus stop across my hotel lobby.  I ask one.  He quotes a fare 10 RMB to the office gate of Shilu Iron Mine.  As it is inexpensive, I accept his offer.  The ride takes about ten minutes.  I later discover that the office is only two and a half kilometres south of my hotel.  When I alight, I find to my dismay that no mine is around.  Only houses.  The driver points to the tiny sentry office at the gate of the ore-mining company and departs.

Fortunately, the security lady is a Hainanese.  I explain my purpose in our common dialect.  Seeing that I bear no authorisation letter from her company, she initially rejects my entreaty.  Extremely disappointed, I none the less politely thank her and leave, giving up my dream of ever viewing the mine, when she unexpectedly calls me back.  My heart jumps.

Convinced by my bona fide claim as a harmless travel-guide author, she asks me to wait.  She rings her friend, an employee at the iron mine.  He is free to bring me up on his motorbike.  I happily wait.  Within fifteen minutes, he arrives.  Is this for real, I pinch myself.  The lone guard at the only road up hoists the security bar to let us through.  Yes!

After curving with the winding road for about three kilometres, my guide stops at a vantage spot for me to photograph the deep oval-shaped open mine on our left.  I stand by the edge of the narrow road, on the edge of a huge cavity.  Our road runs around it.  I gape in astonishment.  Its depth is, in my mental computation, at least two hundred metres.  Its width at its widest is at least five hundred metres.  I quickly survey my surrounding.  The highest point of this hilly range is probably around three hundred metres above sea level, and we are standing on an elevation of some two hundred and fifty metres.  

Half a kilometre ahead is one of the peaks of this range.  Unlike the barren terraces around the monstrous pit below us, the higher slope stretching from our road to that peak is also terraced but lightly covered with trees and shrubs.  As I stare at the ascending stepped slope, the gentleman informs me that the earth and ore excavated from the hole below us was once part of that mountain ridge.  But this huge hole has been dug by Chinese labourers after the war, he continues.

Fingering the upper slope again, he relates that it is the locality laboured by the Australian and British prisoners.  From my calculation, they had onerously removed at least a fifty-metre depth of earth with the primitive hoes and shovels supplied by their Japanese captors.  I can now visualise the road terminating at the ground where I am standing; I can now visualise the scrawny starving prisoners dragging their exhausted feeble bodies, daily along the sandy tracks to the peak to cleave the hard ground.  From there they precariously bore their cane baskets of ores down the steep slope to the waiting trucks and rail carriages.

Still persisting as evidence of their toil and suffering are the sparsely vegetated terraces on the raped slope but in time, as the sterile slope slowly recovers with lush green regeneration from the accumulating nutrient-rich plant compost and animal or bird manure, the prisoners’ presence may, sadly, be forgotten.

As I recapitulate the horrors of war inflicted upon those men merely six or seven decades back, I have an unflinching respect for their grit and perseverance in enduring another day of hell-hole in a strange land, an island they had not even heard of previously.  The bravery of the few who attempted escape is laudable and even astounding; they trusted the local inhabitants to protect them.  The name “Shilu” (石碌) now evokes sombre images in my thoughts.  Its literal translation “Stone Toilsome” (or “Toilsome Stone”) was apt, although not a full description of this town now.  

A passing car awakes my mesmerising introspection.  It probably belongs to a senior company officer.  Swiftly, I snap a few photographs before he emerges and expels me from the scene.  No, there is no monument at the peak to commemorate the war prisoners’ labour, my guide answers.  

With that response, I have no justification to beg him to take me to the peak, even though I harbour that wish.  As his motorbike brings us down the paved circuit, I am haunted by visions of weary POWS writhing under their loads.  I am extremely glad the security officer does not stop and confiscate my camera of indelible memories.  

My guide is very generous.  Going out of his way, he drives me down Kuangshan (矿山; lit: Mine Mountain) Road to the nearby railway tracks where the Japanese masters had transported the iron ores.  Unfortunately, he is unaware of the location of any prisoner’s grave.  As we converse, a dark-green locomotive engine with white identification number “0522” slowly creeps before us.  It has no carriages.  A man in yellow safety helmet is standing at its open left door.  He is looking out for someone or something.  Perhaps the lead train will later be hooked to its cargo carriages.  I thank my guide profusely for showing me the mine and railway, the few reminders of the Japanese exploitation of my ancestral Hainan.


Bawangling, home of the singing Mountain Bulbuls

(绿翅短脚鹎)
 

Bawangling National Forest Park is fifteen kilometres south of Shilu as the crow flies but twenty-six kilometres by the winding road.  From Dongfang town, the distance is forty-five kilometres east.  Ever since I first heard its name some time ago, I had been under the assumption that the term “Bawangling” means “Ridge of the Eight Kings” (八王岭).  But now, a consultation of my map and pocket dictionary erases my error; it is “Ridge of the Feudal Overlord” (霸王岭).    

Established in 1980, this fairly large reserve of sixty-seven square kilometres was generously expanded by the government in 2003 to some three hundred square kilometres, transmitting its serious intention in preserving the island’s rich flora and fauna.

Not knowing much about my destination, I decide on an early start with lunch at the very early hour of nine-thirty on Saturday morning.  I am fortunate.  Some coffee shops and food stalls are open.  I enter one at random.  I am its first customer.  I stick to my list of hygienically safe dishes: a cup of tea, a bowl of rice, a small plate of vegetables, two small fried fish, and an omelette, selected from a variety of cooked food on the counter.

Shortly thereafter, two gentlemen enter and, after placing their orders, sit at separate tables.  We pay on delivery of our food, and I inadvertently overhear the cost of their meal: it is even less than mine, which is only 15 RMB.  Silently, all of us finish our meal in quick time.  

Walking towards the bus station diagonally across the road from my hotel, I meet hawker stalls selling clothing, fruits, and grocery products.  The kerb is thronged with people.  Some are making their early purchases for the day; some are spectators; and some are waiting for public transport.  In the small parking lot suited for accommodating nine buses are five, two seated with passengers.  The driver in one points to the empty vehicle behind his.

Being early, I quickly board and occupy the front seat to the right of the driver’s.  The green “Shilu – Bawang” (石碌 - 霸王) bus leaves at ten-fifteen.  The fare is 6 RMB.  It creeps out of the car park, picking passengers along Renmin Road.  By the time it reaches the end of the road, it is full.  And when it leaves the perimeter of town, it is packed to the brim.  

On the edge of town are some industries related to mining.  Travelling further along 705 County Road, I face the giant silos of two cement factories about half a kilometre apart.  Their names in Mandarin and English are prominently fixed to the walls near their entrances: “Chang Jiang Hua Sheng Tian Ya Cement Company” (昌江华盛天涯水泥有限公司) and “China Resource Cement (Changjiang) Limited” (華潤水泥（昌江）有限公司).  The former receives its sand from a quarry about fourteen kilometres south of Shilu while the latter receives its sand from two quarries, the smaller one about three kilometres south and the larger one about ten kilometres south.  One of the largest cement producers in China, China Resource Cement has twelve other production lines in southern China.

Our bus glides under their elevated sand-conveying belts, which look like miniature train lines.  Hainan produced eight million tons of cement in 2006.  As its local demand was only six million tons, the surplus was exported to the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.  

During the journey along the clean two-lane asphalt road with few vehicles, I catch glimpses of flat farms and fields, vast expanse of verdant forest, and long mountain ranges.  Trees, shrubs, and long grasses proliferate on both sides of the land.  At one bend, the thin overhanging branches and leaves of some tall overgrown shrubs lightly brush the right side of our speeding bus.

Two young girls aged about eight and ten are standing on the uneven gravel track to my left, looking aimlessly.  Freed from classes and daily chores on Saturday morning, they are perhaps finding excitement in spotting or identifying the passing traffic.  I ponder over their future, the lives they would be leading once they have finished their education in this rural country region.

“Will their children stand here too the way they do?”  I ask myself.

As usual, passengers alight at their villages, which are far apart, while others board, bound for their destinations.  The changing view is scenic and refreshing, perhaps because I am a city dweller.  One structure intrigues me: a four-metre wide concrete flight of stairs that lead to nowhere and a cage on the concrete platform at its upper left corner.  Do the villagers sit on the stairs to watch a night opera performed on the empty road under the bright and clear starry sky?  Or do they stand there to mock a local recalcitrant imprisoned in the temporary lock-up?

Some enterprising entrepreneur is advertising his company on the podium wall; his beautiful graffiti sprayed in black of the two Chinese characters “挖机” (“waji”, or “excavating machine”) and a telephone number reveals an artistic hand.  He should consider a career in art instead.

Surprisingly, the bus is still full when it ends in Bawangling town at eleven-thirty.  I should have a good start for the day.  As I descend, the driver thoughtfully explains that I need to hire a motorcyclist to bring me to the park at the cost of 30 RMB.  I thank him profusely.  “Xie xie ni; xie xie ni.”  I see a bunch of men waiting for passengers.  I ask one.  When he mentions the reasonable fare, I immediately accept, and leap onto his motorcycle.

Riding the low-powered noisy machine around the higher slopes on the smooth but narrow twisting road, with the width of almost two lanes, induces a thrill that I cannot explain.  In the stillness and quiet of the mountain, the repetitive spluttering of the engine is hypnotic.  I am delighted with my decision to come here.  The weather is fine; the sky is blue.  Evergreen vegetation surrounds me.  Some birds are singing in the bush somewhere.  No houses can be detected the further we travel.

Unthinkingly, and - on hindsight - foolishly, I reach for my instant camera in my T-shirt pocket.  The fresh breeze cools my face as I dangerously clench the pillion belt with my left hand while filming with the other.  The distance to my destination is about seven and a half kilometres.    

When we reach the carefully designed and neatly maintained small park in front of Bawangling Forestry Reception Center and Hotel, not a soul is around.  No tourists, no employees.  The only sign of their presence is the ten or so empty stationary cars scattered along the narrow drives.  All around me are the towering mountain ranges and thick green forests of gigantic trees.  Although the day is bright and clear, I have an uncharacteristic fleeting fear.

Where do I begin?  I have no desire to spend a night or two, wandering confusedly in this vast rugged terrain filled with unknown dangers.  Keeping my terrified thoughts to myself, I unhesitatingly seek my motorcyclist’s service as guide for an hour or two for the price of 30 RMB.  He accepts.  

Thus, we begin our ascent on his motorcycle along the elevating paved road to report at the small ticket office about four hundred metres off.  After I have paid the 30-RMB admission fee, he drives me further up another three hundred metres where flights of wooden stairs had been constructed on the higher slope on our right for easy access.

This section of the slope inclines at a steep angle of more than forty-five degrees.  The wooden structures were installed before the park opened its door to the public three years ago, my guide informs.  After finding a suitable site by the road to park his motorcycle, we proceed on foot.  Ahead is a lookout.

“What do these words say?”  I politely enquire.
“夫妻石 (Fuqi Shi)”, he reads aloud the words on the wooden plaque for me.  

He briefly explains its meaning, which I grasp.  This is the “Husband-and-Wife Rock”.  Product of a climatic fissile, two large slaps of sandstones tilt at a seventy-degree angle beneath us, imparting an indistinct impression of a person supporting another on his back.  How appropriate!  

“Zhege difang hen piaoliang!”  (“This place is very beautiful!”)  I comment laconically, recalling my list of stock phrases.
“Shi.”  (“Yes”)  He acknowledges.

As I rapidly scan, I am overwhelmed by the seemingly impenetrable forest, its bushy foliage masking the valleys and mountain ranges with all shades of green.  Directing my attention on a vegetated slope far away, I discern a few denuded thin and tall boulders pointing to the sky as well as some steep, bald crags just like the one below me.  

Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps hidden among the leafy branches behind me, Hainan Gibbons are teasing one another or even eyeing us.  Endemic to Hainan, they once roamed the whole island when it was thickly wooded.  But after centuries of deforestation and hunting, these harmless primates verged on the precipice of extinction.  Only seven individuals in two groups were tabulated in this area in 1980.  Fortunately, with the immediate foundation of this conservation reserve, their numbers increased to twenty-three in four groups in 1998.  Unfortunately, a 2003 survey confirmed the presence of only thirteen individuals.  

Professor Liang Wei is one of the conservationists involved in an international effort to rescue these native mammals.  These pioneers include Wu Wei and Duane Silverstein, Director of Seacology, an American non-government environmental organization.  With their diverse expertise and financial support, as well as cooperation of the Li ethnic minorities living in the neighbouring villages, the Hainan Gibbons may yet be saved.

These black-headed kin of homosapiens live in small sedentary groups and advertise their presence through their morning songs.  They are a separate species, the Hylobates Hainanus, distinct from the gibbons in Vietnam and Yunnan, some taxonomists recently suggest.  

Besides the Hainan Gibbons, other animals may be lurking nearby such as the Asiatic black bears, Hainan rabbits, Hainan flying squirrels, pangolins, and sambars.  The Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) is one of the five species of black bears in the world and is registered as globally “vulnerable”.  Growing up to one metre and a third in height, the Asiatic black bears are found in China, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Himalayas, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.  Being agile climbers, they live in deciduous forests of the highlands, feeding mainly on berries and fruits.  They have a ferocious reputation and are unafraid of human beings.

Clouded Leopards (Neofelis nebulosa) are slightly smaller at up to one metre in length.  But they may be extinct.  However, reptiles like snakes and frogs are slithering or hopping around.  Some researchers have discovered ten species of frogs in a single stream.  At night, the twinkling lights of the fireflies will be spectacular if one does not mind the occasional leeches.  

Below their Chinese characters, with my subsequently transposed pinyins in the parentheses, the English translations on two signboards perplex me: “Bossy” (霸道; Ba Dao), “Python king” (蟒王; Mang wang), “Overlord Sihai” (霸王石海; Ba Wang Shi Hai), “Ba Wang Sheng Tam” (霸王圣潭; Ba Wang Sheng Tan), “Stone Bully”, (石霸; Shi Ba), “Jas increase waterfall” (雅加大瀑布; Ya Jia Da Pu Bu), “Jas plus holiday center” (雅加度假中心; Ya Jia Du Jia Zhong Xin), and “Tourists stepped” (游客止步; You Ke Zhi Bu).  During times like these, I wish I was more studious during Mandarin lessons in the days of my primary education.

Nearby is the flight of wooden stairs.  By its entrance is a signpost.  Polished and varnished, the sawn tree trunk stands at a metre and a half in height.  On it is artistically craved: 霸道.  Is “Bossy” an apt description for a mountain walkway?  Now, I say to myself, the translation of “Bossy” does not seem right.  “Dao” is “road”.  That I recognise.  “Ba dao” is, I suspect, an abbreviation of “Bawangdao”, or “Overlord’s Road”.  Perusing my Chinese-English dictionary later, I painstakingly endeavour to unravel the meaning of each character.  Linked together, the two characters of “Ba Dao” (“Bossy”) denote despotism or tyranny.    

Hobbling up the planks, I soon grasp the intent of those enigmatic official translations.  Weathering over the millennia had eroded the soft soil on the slope to my right, thus creating many stone features, including a couple of rock pools, each at a higher elevation than the others, from the firmly entrenched hard rock.  These small, shallow pools, averaging four or five metres in diameter, are replenished with water from the constant supply trickling from the misty peak.

During the monsoonal season from May to October, the heavy downfall will gush down this slope, producing a fascinating cascade of short waterfalls.  “Jas increase waterfall”, if corrected into “Typical Increasing Cataract”, might enlighten visitors.  But I will forego the pleasure of seeing this marvel during a heavy downpour or thunderstorm.

“Python king” is an elongated, greyish natural granite pillar lying on its side.  Partially covered by shrubs, the visible part seems like a snake’s head.  “Overlord Shihai” is an exaggeration.  “Overlord’s Stone Sea” or “Overlord’s Sea in the Stone” is not a “sea”; it is a deep rock pool if full, and it may even serve as an impromptu swimming pool to the courageous.  Today, the water is shallow and cloudy after a dry spell.  “Ba Wang Sheng Tam” is another rock pool, revered as “Overlord’s Holy Pool”.  Why is it revered?

I hear voices coming near one of these pools on the upper slope.  I climb the walkway towards the source.

Dominating the edge of a gentle fall is a round boulder, slightly more than a metre in diameter.  Its spherical shape reveals that over the decades or centuries it has been rolling down slowly until it pauses in this position.  Another mighty spurt of rain water may tip it over to the lower level, and the resulting fury may perhaps be a thunderous roar.  Is this “Overbearing Stone”, so named in the nearby plaque, the same “Stone Bully” referred to in the signpost?

A couple in their late thirties or early forties are enjoying their leisure with their teenage daughter, who is merrily jumping from rock to rock.  I greet the gentleman with a “Ni hao.”  

Getting a favourable identical response, I then pose, “Ni nali lai de?”  (“Where do you come from?”)
“Wo men shi bendiren.”  (“We are locals.”)

Hearing the term “bendiren” for the first time but suspecting that it means “local”, I enquire, “Ni de jia zai nali?” (“Where is your house?”)
“Bawangling”
“Oh, you are not from Beijing or Shanghai?  I have met many tourists from Beijing and Shanghai travelling around Hainan.”

No, this is not the first time they have been up here.  They have visited the park several times.  Naturally, I praise the beautiful scenery of their backyard and courteously take my leave, allowing them to continue enjoying their delightful moments.  Like them, I too would wish to frequently tramp up this tranquil mountain, inhale its refreshing air, and meet some of its - I suppose, harmless - inhabitants.

Luckless, I hear or see no Hainan Gibbon or Asiatic black bear.  I am not disappointed because one is more likely to find a needle in a haystack than stumble upon these reclusive creatures.  What would I do should one suddenly pop up in front of me?  I would panic and vamoose in the opposite direction.  I have an eerie feeling that they may be watching me.  Discretion leads me to end my tour after an hour.  I am too scared to tarry.  I am satisfied that I have at least seen their lair or nest, a home that is environmentally safe for them to inhabit.  My desire is for their off-springs to multiply and enjoy the fruits of this rich and serene forest.

Taking another road down, we saunter under the canopy of a tall tree.  On its branches, numerous birds are singing their hearts out.  They constantly fly from branch to branch like restless kids, perhaps in courtship dance.  Could they be Hainan Blue Flycatchers (Cyornis hainanus)?  An adult male is a beautiful bird.  He has brilliant blue plumage on the upper half of his body to attract the females while an adult female has brown wings, which blend with the ground to escape predators’ notice.  A juvenile is brown in colour.  Its wings are brown while its breast is light-blue turning to white at the lower part.  When he is serenading, an adult male, measuring even up to fifteen centimetres in length, raises his head, his beak directing his songs to heaven.  

Cursing myself for not bringing a pair of binoculars or a higher-magnification camera, I randomly aim my functional digital one at the height, hoping to capture some images, however fuzzy they may be.  Fortunately, one photograph is successful, the mystery birds being kindly identified by Liang Wei as Mountain Bulbuls.  As their name implies, these songbirds live in the forests of hills and mountains.  Classified as sub-species “I.m. holti”, they belong to the species “Ixos mcclellandii” in the family of Pycnonotidae.  They are found in southern China, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas.  They feed mainly on berries and fruits, and occasionally on insects.  Like the other species of bulbuls, their voices, reminiscent of the mythological Sirens’, are so melodious that they are simply unforgettable.

Ornithologists would have a fruitful day sporting with the numerous varieties of birds carousing in this reserve.  Using night surveys and infra-red auto-triggered cameras, a group of researchers has recorded one hundred and forty-three species of birds over the seven-year period from 1998 to 2005.  Bulbuls, cuckoos, minivest, needletails, prinias, swifts, Thick-billed Green Pigeons, and Hainan Blue Flycatchers were the most frequently encountered species while the rare and threatened species included Slaty-backed Forktails, Yellow-cheeked Tits, Mountain Tailorbirds, Hainan Partridges, Hainan Leaf Warblers, Japanese Paradise-flycatchers, Yellow-billed Nuthatches, Hainan Peacock Pheasants, Blacked-browed Barbets, and Indochinese Green Magpies.  

Retrieving his motorcycle from the Couple Stone Lookout, my guide then points to a flight of wooden stairs down the mountain slope, saying that he will wait for me at the car park.  

Meekly, I ask him, “Will I get lost going down there?”
“No.  There is only one way down.  You won’t be lost.”  He reassures.

Still, I am alarmed.  The boardwalk is broad, sufficient for two persons to amble side by side.  The trees are tall but the forest is not dense, permitting sunlight to penetrate and brighten the ground.  With an annual precipitation of 1750 millimetres in Bawangling, small palms thrive under the cool shadow of overhanging branches and leaves.  I am surprised the undergrowth is not as thick as I have expected and the tree trunks are thin.  Many small boulders are scattered on the floor.  They have obviously tumbled their way from the upper slopes.  My mind wanders to the time when the pre-modern ethnic Li hunters lumber their way on this steep terrain to track and snare their prey with their bows and poisoned arrows.  I am fortunate.  My route up and down has been made easier.

Under the wooden safety handrail of the boardwalk is an empty reddish-brown pupal shell about five centimetres in length.  I look closely.  Of its three pairs of legs, its front pair is thicker and thus stronger.  What sort of insect has emerged from this exoskeleton attached to a ledge that is exposed to human disturbances?  Its size suggests a cicada.  It was home to a cicada nymph.  This is confirmed later by an online check.

An adult female lays her eggs on the leaves or in the stem of a plant.  After hatching, the wingless nymphs fall onto the soft leafy humus where they burrow and feed on root sap, moulting several times.  Finally, they claw out of their burrows with the aid of their powerful forelegs and cling onto a higher place like a tree trunk or this ledge where they will break out of their skin after an hour or so and fly off to a new life, propelled by their delicate harden wings.  Too late, I have just missed the opportunity of witnessing this wondrous event.

“Lovers’ Valley” on the nearby signpost is the English translation of the large faded-red characters 情人谷 (Qingren Gu) calligraphically chiselled on the upper rockface of the seventy-metre cliff to my right.  This cliff is almost barren, except for grasses struggling in the crevices which have trapped minute particles of fertile soil.  At the foot of this cliff is a cave that is partially covered by ferns and shrubs.  Perhaps it is the den or lair of some animals, I mumble.

Other directions are also etched on the signpost, directions to, for example, “Lovers Waterfall” and “Lovers Bridge”.  But “Excaliber Incense” (the English translation beneath “王者之香”) and “Days ax ShenGong” (beneath “天斧神工”) befuddle me.  “Tian Fu Shen Gong” may be literally rendered as “Heaven Axe God Work”.  But what does it mean? “Excaliber Incense” (Wang zhe zhi xiang) should perhaps be revised to “The King of Fragrance”.  It probably refers to the most fragrant species of sandalwood.        

Crossing Lovers’ Bridge, I notice some plants with name tags.  With a diameter of about ten centimetres, a Combretum squamosum Combretaceae vine is twisting its way a metre from a Canarium album Burseraceae.  The latter is a tree with a trunk of about twenty centimetres in diameter.  It can reach a height of thirty metres.  Tapped from its trunk, its aromatic resinous white sap is used for making incense.  Perhaps this Chinese olive tree is the referent of “Excaliber Incense”.  Its raw fruit is edible while its dried fruit is used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Belonging to the Annonaceae or custard-apple family, the Artabotrys hexapetalus (commonly known as Climbing Ylang-ylang) here develops into a vine instead of a woody plant, creeping over a boulder.  As its name implies, it has six-petal flowers.  These aromatic yellow flowers contain essential oils that are used for the manufacture of perfume.  Ellipanthus glabrifolius Connaraceae and Pterospermum lanceaefolium Sterculiaceae are two of the other tagged trees.  

I emerge at the car park where my guide is waiting.  I have a quick last glance at the majestic and beautiful mountain ranges, which I may not have the chance to revisit.  With a tinge of sadness, I mount his bike and we begin our descent.  I note the time: it is only two in the afternoon.  A bird perches on an overhead electrical cable.  My guide kindly stops his bike.  Before I could alight to photograph the shy beauty, it flies off.  This is a good sign; she possesses the instinctive skill for survival because she might otherwise fall victim to hunters or collectors.

Bawangling town does not have many food or goods shops.  Perhaps the residents are not rich enough to dine in cafes.  I would like to try the local food.  With nothing else to do, I sit in the bus and wait for twenty minutes.  More locals fill the bus, which leaves at two-thirty.  Many drop off along the way.

After an hour’s journey with few stops, the bus reaches Shilu bus station.  It is a very hot afternoon.  The light breeze brings a blast of oven heat to my face.  I estimate the temperature to be about thirty-three degrees Celsius.  It is unbearable to walk further.  I return to my hotel to escape, to enjoy the fruits that I have just bought from one of the roadside stalls.


Bustling Danzhou city  儋州

 
Checking out at ten on Sunday morning, I manage to catch the Danzhou-bound bus fifty minutes later.  Its fare is 18 RMB.  Cooling clients with air-conditioning, the twenty-five seater runs slowly for the first fifteen minutes, picking up half the number of projected passengers.  

At eleven-fifteen, it jolts off along the main Renmin North Road that soon widens into the clean six-lane Changjiang Road.  After a distance of about three kilometres, the bus turns right into 225 National Road, which is undergoing expansion and bitumen surfacing.

An hour later, the road is smooth and unhindered.  Although the bus clock indicates noon time, which should be hot externally, the internal temperature is a comfortable twenty-five degrees Celsius.  The unmarked four-lane highway is bordered with tall and slender trees which, together with the lush sparsely populated agricultural fields, attest to the fertility and productivity of the western plain.  Occasionally dashing by, common fruit trees offer banana, papaya, and rose apple, which are supplementary zest to the residents’ simple diet.

To ease us along our long journey, the driver has downloaded a disc into his DVD recorder, screening a local opera on the overhead television set.  As Danzhou dialect does not sound anywhere close to Hainanese dialect, I cannot understand a word.  However, pictures speak louder than words.  The story is tragic, which leaves me deliberating why the driver should play such a melancholic drama when a comedy would uplift our tired spirit.

An old man accidentally fell to his death after being pushed by a rapacious landlord.  Eighteen years later, the former’s two sons, now grown up, left their family home to seek their fortune but met with disasters instead.  To gain employment in a rich family’s home, one son then disguised himself as a woman.

Unfortunately, after half an hour, the bus reaches the terminus and the show is abruptly terminated.  Frustratingly, I do not get to know its finale.  And neither would you, the reader!

Danzhou (儋州) City has a population in 2010 of 932,362, which is almost half that of Haikou City.  Generally, the land is flat but fertile, permitting it to be included in “China Top 100 Agricultural City”.  Its highest peak, Shamao Ridge, is only seven hundred and fifty-two metres above sea level.  Its coast of two hundred and forty kilometres faces Guangdong Province across Qiongzhou Strait.

Two thousand years earlier, this region was known as “Dan’er” (儋耳; Drooping Ear) because its inhabitants, like the Dayaks and Kayans of Southeast Asia, had pendant-carrying ear lobes.  

Our bus reaches Nada (那大), the capital of Danzhou City, at one in the early afternoon.  Its terminus is, as I will soon discover, only two hundred metres from Rongxing Hotel (荣兴酒店).  Both are on the same side of Zhongxing Road (中兴大道) but are separated by a roundabout and 225 National Road.  Ignorant of that fact, I enquire the fare to the hotel.  A trishaw lady instantly quotes 4 RMB.  Mockingly, another lady shouts “5 RMB”.  I suspect something is amiss.  A local boy is smiling, confirming to me my foolishness.  Not knowing the actual distance or direction, I naturally accept the lower offer.  The nightly hotel tariff is 128 RMB because I am staying two nights; otherwise, it is 148 RMB.  I put 600 RMB as deposit.  

After studying the small map on the hotel brochure, I search for a laundry.  A gentleman points to a road but I cannot find the shop.  Like those in Haikou, the streets here are wide, clean, and bustling with people.  Their walking pace is fast, as if they have important appointments to attend.  This is surprising to me because I expect a more relaxed lifestyle on a Sunday.  

Re-tracing my way to my hotel, I learn the location of a laundry from a pleasant-looking taxi driver.  He stands among the fifteen or so cabs and trishaws waiting for passengers in the narrow car park opposite my hotel entrance.  I negotiate a 350-RMB deal with him to take me to Baimajing, Zhonghe, and Yangpu the following day.  After thanking him, I enter the familiar Do & Mi family restaurant at the corner to have my late lunch at three.

Located mid-way along the short Dongpo Road, the laundry charges a reasonable 6 RMB for a piece of clothing.  I hand over eight pieces.  Hers is the only laundry in town, the proprietress says.

 
Nanfeng (南丰镇), the little town that remembers Lady Xian

 
With enough time at five in the evening, I return to the car park.  One of the milling taxi drivers approaches me, enquiring and then quoting a fare of 150 RMB to the Xian Furen temple in Nanfeng town.  Unknown to me, the young driver in his late twenties or early thirties has two luckless passengers in his cab, patiently waiting for two others to some destination.  Being unceremoniously ejected, they are naturally angry, loudly voicing their resentment.  Partly responsible for their plight, I feel embarrassed.

Instead of forty kilometres as floated by one of the hotel receptionists, the temple is only about fifteen kilometres south by road, which makes the journey extremely expensive.  A fair price should be 120 RMB or less.  The whole trip takes only an hour because I am back at the fast food restaurant at six in the evening.

Nanfeng is a very small, sparsely populated town that sprung from a country village.  The buildings are mainly two-storey and constructed, perhaps, after the Second World War.  They are old, their white paint turning dirty and grey with age and weathering.  After a pedestrian’s direction, we drive on.  The street narrows into a constricted and littered lane, which is passable by only one car.  On each side of the lane is a row of houses, mainly single-storey.

Located on the left row as we enter, it was, I conjecture, previously a residential house but was partly rebuilt later and converted into a temple.  My driver even misses it and has to reverse at the dead-end on the northern edge of Songtao Reservoir (松涛水库), which I snatch a quick glimpse of.  

Some passing residents again point out the location.  It is not the Xian Furen temple that I wish to see.  The front is a dirty-purple coloured wall with a small steel gate.  Above the shut gate is a small similarly-coloured tiled roof.  Beneath it is a red paper panel with black Chinese characters: 冼太廟 (Xian Tai Miao; Xian Tai Temple).

The gate is not locked.  No one is inside.  Young Driver opens it.  The courtyard is bare.  The door to the former residence had been demolished, thus creating a sheltered hall.  On the right wall are four large frames enclosing information about the life of Lady Xian; on the left wall are some decorative cloth scrolls.  

Against the back wall is a table-like pedestal supporting a wooden cabinet-altar which contains a small statue of about half a metre high of Lady Xian.  She is sculptured as an older woman with a slightly elongated smiling face.  Wearing a colourful traditional headgear and a red costume, she is seated between two smaller figures.  On the pedestal are also a painting and a print of her.  At the right corner are four drums, each about half a metre in diameter, which would be played, I suppose, during the celebration of her birthday.  

Perhaps rejoicing from his anticipated fortune, Young Driver lights an incense stick and, clutching it with both hands, reverentially bows before the goddess.  Having done so, he plunges it into the bronze censer on the wooden table in front of the altar.  While I am photographing the temple curios, he is curious, seeking my purpose in visiting this temple.  I briefly explain my possible link to Lady Xian’s husband as we leave.

Consisting of two lanes, the country road is narrow.  Thick forests thrive on either side, confirming an agrarian region of few families.  Yet, here in this small country town, they have heard of her heroism, and even worshipped her.  A remarkable woman she must be.  Is she my ancestor?


Renowned poet Su Shi (苏轼), academy at Zhonghe

(东坡书院在中和镇)
 

Fu Si Ba (符司扒) meets me as agreed at nine-thirty in the morning.  Driving along Meiyang and 308 Provincial Road, he steers towards Zhonghe, which is about forty kilometres northwest of Nada.  Zhonghe is situated on Beimen’s (Northern Door) left bank, the juncture where the river from Songtao Reservoir, flowing northwestwards through Danzhou downtown, splits into two to drain into Danzhou Bay (also known as Yangpu or Chappu Bay), four kilometres northwest of Zhonghe.

Up until the eleventh century, this ancient capital of Danzhou district was also a seaport.  But it gradually became landlocked because of the silt flushed down by the inland flood water.

Almost reaching the historic town, we depart from the main road and enter into a narrow country road that is overwhelmed by green meadows and trees.  Paved with bitumen, the village road was more likely an earthen track when Su Dongpo landed here nine hundred years ago.  Back then, prior to the fall of Northern Song, Zhonghe’s population numbered probably in the thousands or tens of thousands, living off the yields from the rich soil and uncontaminated sea.

On the outskirt of town was the fledgling school established by the venerable poet and his son in 1097 in the home built for them by a sympathetic local magistrate, Zhang Zhonghe.  Four centuries later, this school was renamed in Su’s honour as Dongpo Academy of Classical Learning.    

Beside the Academy’s car park is a narrow nature strip, where six young children in casual clothing are sitting on the top of a large spherical boulder.  Aged nine or ten years, four of them are girls.  Teasing one another, they are happy, without a care in the world.  They are such innocent and lovely people.  Are they on school vacation?

On the other side of the road is a large pond that seems like the slow-flowing Beimen River nearby.  In full bloom, the infesting water hyacinths floating on the water surface add attractive colour to their green leaves with pale-purple flowers.  Beyond the serpentine flow is also an expanse of green, the fields and fruiting trees of local farmers.  

Taking a cursory glance at me, the elderly receptionist offers me the “Seniors” concession ticket costing 15 RMB.  I am actually prepared to pay the full fee.  As I step through the entrance, a small pavilion stands before me.  The three characters painted stylistically, I decipher, declare that it is the Zaijiuting (载酒亭; literally, Carrying Beer Pavilion).  Looking at the pavilion, I reflect: did Su Dongpo and his few friends or visitors spend some quiet moments under its pre-renovated roof, sipping bowls of rice wine and ruminating over the life that was?  Two stone tablets nearby provide a brief introduction: one is in English while the other in Chinese.  

 “Dongpo Academy, originally called the Hall of Carried Wine, was founded in the fourth year of the Shaosheng era of the Northern Song Dynasty (1097).   It was here that the literary giant, Su Dongpo, propagated the culture of Central China, during his three-year residence in Danzhou.  The site was maintained and expanded during successive dynasties.  In the fourth year of the Taiding era of the Yuan Dynasty (1327), it was renamed Dongpo Memorial Temple.  And in the twenty-seventh year of the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty (1548) the name was again changed, this time to Dongpo Academy.”

 Nine hundred years have elapsed.  As the tablets suggest, the features that I happily perceive were, I am afraid to say, untouched and unseen by the venerable poet; yet I can sense the natural surrounding and the fresh air that he breathed.  

Flanking the pavilion are two small ponds.  I briefly pause to admire the layout.  The green water is stagnant but filled with beautiful purplish lotus flowers.  Pots of reddish-purple bougainvilleas sit on the decorative safety walls around the ponds.  Excitement carries me towards the small single-storey traditional Chinese building.  This is the Zaijiutang (载酒堂; literally, Carrying Beer Hall), the lecture hall of Su Dongpo, who regularly congregated here with his friends.  In it are seven stone tablets on each side of the screen at the entrance.  The tributes on these memorials were written by notables.  I cannot comprehend the words craved on them.  What they say should be interesting.  

I cross the courtyard to the building beyond.  In the courtyard is, on my right, a “Feng Huang” tree.  A “Phoenix” tree!  This is the tree that phoenixes will only roost, according to legend.  A stone plaque grounded near the base of its trunk records that it was planted in 1738, which makes it more than two hundred and seventy years old.  It belongs to the “Paulowniaceae” family.  In summer, its big red flowers should delight spectators.  Its soft wood is used for making soundboards of “guqin”, which is a Chinese seven-string zither without bridges, and “pipa”, which is a Chinese four-string upright guitar.  The deciduous tree may mature to fifteen metres in height.  On my left is a mango tree bearing many green mangoes.  It too was planted the same year, the information on another plaque.  I stare at a fruit longingly; temptation threatens to overpower my resisting soul.

Inside the second building, the Great Hall, are three life-size statues.  Protecting them from the soiled hands of inquisitive tourists is a low railing.  To satisfy our innate disposition to tap or touch them, an online government article specifies their composition: fibreglass.  Two of the figures are sitting while one is standing.  In the middle is seated Su Dongpo, attired in a light-blue gown.  His left hand is holding an open book while his right is stroking his beard.  

Standing in light-green gown is his twenty-five year old son.  Unmarried, Su Guo (1072-1123) voluntarily spent six years in exile with his father in Huizhou (Guangdong) and Hainan.  A gifted poet too, he is the younger of the two sons of Dongpo’s second wife.  Dongpo’s first wife bore him one.  Holding a rolled paperback in his right hand, a bearded native in dark-blue gown looks confused.  Su the elder was trying to educate him.

Dongpo was exiled to Hainan from 1097 to 1100, a period of almost four years.  He was sixty-one when he landed with his son.  Even though Su Shi was a disgraced political exile, the magistrate in Danzhou was a decent man who treated him very well, even offering his official residence as home.  For this, he was ignominiously sacked when an imperial inspector visited and reported the lavish treatment to the emperor.

Moving to Zhonghe, where he lived in a hut near a Li village, Dongpo befriended and won the respect of the local families through a school which he had established at his residence.  Tried as he might, he however could not change their staunch tradition.  He would have wondered if he was destined to live out the remaining days of his life in this savage land where the natives did not imbibe medicinal brew to relieve their illness but offered shamanistic oxen sacrifices to the gods.  Later afflicted with bouts of malaria, the emaciated scholar experimented with herbal cures, although the ingredients were scarce.  Food was in short supply too because the island had not recovered from a few harvestless years after an unforeseen prolonged drought.

Fortunately for his reputation, Dongpo was rehabilitated and recalled by Huizong, the newly-installed eighth Song emperor.  Unfortunately, on his way to Changzhou the following year, he died from fever and intestinal disorders.

Born in Meishan, Sichuan, in January 1037 during the fifteenth year of the fourth Song emperor’s forty-one year reign (1022–1063), Su Shi came from a fairly wealthy family, which enabled him to pursue a scholarly life.  Despite parental pressure to marry at seventeen, he loved his wife Wang Fu, who died a decade later.  In 1057, he passed the imperial jinshi (进士) examinations, ranking second.  His younger brother Su Zhe also finished among the top.  Their future seemed bright, the examination system sieving out the grain from the chaff.  The average age of examinees was thirty-five but some were even in their sixties because age and past failures were no barrier.  Su Shi was only twenty.  

Familial deaths retarded his career progression.  His mother’s departure in 1057 confined him in Meishan for the Confucian-obligatory mourning, during which time he prepared himself for the decree examination in which he subsequently excelled in 1061.  Of the forty candidates who passed the twenty-two decree examinations personally supervised by the Song emperors since 964, none was conferred the first or second rank, making the third rank of Su Shi and a previous candidate the highest ever awarded.  Su Zhe achieved the fourth rank.

Alas, intellectual brilliance had no immediate recompense in a bureaucracy bogged by seniority, friendship, and royal patronage.  For a period of three years, the promising scholar was a notary in Fengxiang (west of Chang’an) before the demise of both his wife (1065) and his father (1066) brought him home once again until 1068.

Emperor Renzong’s forty-one year reign came to an end in 1063.  Aged fifty-two, the ruler died without an heir.  His nephew Emperor Yingzong reigned for only a short period from 1063 to 1067, dying suddenly at a young age of almost thirty-five.  Yingzong’s son and successor too died at a young age of thirty-six but after a longer reign of eighteen years - from 1067 to 1085.  

1069 was a year that would spark an unending conflict between traditionalists and modernists for three long decades over the management of the national economy that was stagnating and then in debt from, amongst other causes, high defence expenditure.  Conflicts and tension with the Tanguts of Western Xia and Qidans of Liao dynasty required a regular army of more than a million men, a huge financial strain on the vast empire of 45.4 million.

Returning to the paralysed capital with his brother, Su Shi was appointed as a staff in the Investigation Bureau of the Censorate.  Coincidentally, the young twenty-year old emperor Shenzong appointed Wang Anshi (王安石) to the Council of State (or Grand Council).  

Aged forty-eight, Wang was an accomplished official, brimming with creative ideas.  Born into a family with ten children, the third eldest scion came in fourth among the successful jinshi candidates for his year.  He was only twenty-one.  Thereafter, he held a successful career in his southern Jiangxi province until acclamation of his talent reached the emperor’s ear.  Like the later Su Shi, Wang was a Renaissance man, and one of China’s greatest poets.  That should not be surprising: the zenith of literary achievement was more often rooted on constructive diligence and intelligence.  

Upon his promotion, chief councillor Wang introduced many socio-economic reforms: some were good, some bad.  Government expenditure was prudently reduced by trimming the regular army from 1,162,000 to 568,688 while defence and security was ensured through a superiorly-trained militia of ultimately 7,182,028 men.  That was good.

Adults, especially from farming households, were freed from public service obligation (upon a payment).  That was good because they could consequently devote their time to doing what they knew best.  The land tax was equitably reformed, which prevented tax evasion by the wealthy.  That was good because they should be paying their due.

Replacing questions on poetry and rhapsody with questions on socio-economic issues, the examination system shifted the focus of the education system.  That was good because the examinees would be applying their minds on viable solutions to the urgent matters such as the extant economic stagnation and debt encumbering their society and the threatening kingdoms along the northern border.  

Implementing these New Policies required the increase in number of bureaucrats from twenty-four thousand in 1067 to thirty-four thousand by 1080, a sharp jump of forty-one percent.  That was bad because of the sudden growth in public expenditure and opportunities for bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency.  The court gained monopoly of banking and commerce (for example, the profitable salt industry).  That was bad because lack of competition led to production inefficiency, officials’ corruption, and higher prices.

Profiteering from sales of a basic necessity like salt was deplorable.  Taken for granted by us today, salt was an extremely precious commodity in ancient times.  Peasants needed salt to cure and preserve fish, meat, and vegetable in anticipation of famine; emperors and courtiers sought salt monopolies to enrich themselves.  

Politically conservative, Su Shi condemned almost all of those reforms in his memorials to the emperor.  His allusion in a poem to salt scarcity resulting from the treasury’s monopoly was later cited as part of the treason case against him.

 An old man of seventy, sickle at his waist,
Feels guilty the spring mountain bamboo and bracken are sweet.
It's not that the music of Shao has made him lose his sense of taste.
It's just that he's eaten his food for three months without salt.

Acrimonious relations with the older reformist prompted Su Shi to request a transfer.  He became the vice-prefect of Hangzhou for three years from 1071.  By now, he had married his late wife’s cousin Wang Runzhi (and would soon redeem a twelve-year old courtesan Zhao Yun, whom he would later take as concubine).  Completing his term, he became the prefect of Mizhou in Shandong (1074-1076).  

Meanwhile, his poems lampooning the chief councillor’s reforms made him well-known.  When a famine left many farmers unable to repay the loans promoted overzealously by officials at the government’s twenty-four percent interest rate (which was “generous” relative to the usurious rates charged by wealthy landowners), Wang Anshi became the conservatives’ scapegoat and was sacked in 1075 by the emperor.  His factional court supporters would bide their time to exact revenge.

As prefect of Xuzhou (in northern Jiangsu) from 1077 to 1079, Su Shi warned Shenzong of the potential national instability arising from central Xuzhou’s vulnerability to banditry attacks and the recent Hebei market closure.  Regional capital Pengcheng was only seventy li (thirty-five kilometres) southwest of the Linguo industrial area, where thirty-six smelters were operating and thousands of industrious employees, protected by few military guards, were almost defenceless against outlaws.  If retrenched through their companies’ bankruptcy from the exclusion of Hebei market to their product, the workers might even turn bandits.  Su Shi proposed the Hebei trade resumption as well as training of selected employees as militia.

Wang Anshi’s supporters finally succeeded in their collusion in 1079.  Su Shi was arrested and interrogated, allegedly for stirring civil unrest and slandering the emperor and his royal officials.

Fortunately, Dongpo’s prominent defenders saved him from a certain execution.  Shenzong exiled him to a small village in Huangzhou, Hubei.  Without a salary and almost penniless, he was later given a small plot on the eastern slope of the mountain above the village.

There he lived, writing many of his best poems under his nom de guerre “Dongpo Jushi” (“Resident of Eastern Slope”).  Had Shenzong not die six years later (and Wang Anshi a year after him), Su Shi would have dwelled on Eastern Slope for perhaps the remaining years of his life.

Heeding the advice of the empress dowager and newly-appointed chief councillor Sima Guang, nine-year old emperor Zhezong in 1086 recalled Su Shi to the capital.  Sima died soon after.  Su Shi served in the Hanlin Academy for three years, then seeking a transfer from the constant bureaucratic bickering around him.

In Hangzhou, the newly-appointed prefect swiftly embarked on a series of public works to elevate the peasants’ hardship.  The 1075-76 famine and epidemic had lead to the death of half a million people in the prefecture as well as three hundred thousand in Suzhou.  The disastrous consequences still lingered a decade later.  Su Shi founded an infirmary with fifty taels of silver from his savings; he petitioned the court to decrease taxes; and he appealed for public donation to open clinics.

Most importantly, he employed some two hundred thousand peasants to dredge the stagnant, weed-logged, 5.6 square-kilometre West Lake with the fund dispatched by the dowager.  The excavated mud was used to fortify the bank and build a dike, later named in his honour as Su Causeway.  His philanthropy earned him deep respect among the residents.  Depicted on the one-RMB note, West Lake is now a World Heritage site.

With the dowager’s death in 1093, Su Shi’s last shred of protection disintegrated.  The seventh Song emperor reinstituted Wang Anshi’s reforms and exiled his elderly official initially to Huizhou in Guangdong and then in 1097 to Hainan Island.  Before setting off for Hainan, Su Shi sent his two older sons and their families to Yixing in Changzhou, where he still owned a plot of land.

He was in Hainan for more than three years when twenty-four year old Zhezong died in 1100.  The latter’s eighteen-year old half-brother, emperor Huizong, recalled the exile.  

Su Shi died shortly in August 1101 in Jiangsu on his way to Chengdu for his new post, his three sons grieving at the unexpected twist of events.  His first wife had died when he was thirty years old while his second wife and concubine had died during the five years preceding his Hainan exile.

In a sense, he was fortunate.  He did not live to experience the traumatic invasion of northern China by the Manchurian Jurchens, who would take as prisoners the ill-fated Huizong and his entire household.  With Huizong’s captivity, the collapse of the larger Song Empire (which later historians term as “Northern Song”) would be irreversible.

Going through the narrow moon gate, I enter another section of the historic site.  Within the meticulously landscaped and manicured garden is an ancient tablet beside an equally, if not more ancient well.  In traditional Chinese characters, the information states: 欽師泉 (Qin Shuai Quan; Qinshuai Spring).  “Spring”, the only character I readily recognize, conjures a vision of the arduous collective labour by Dongpo and his Li friends in constructing this well in mutual appreciation - for his educational effort among their community, and for their assistance in building him a hut and home.

Enhancing my delight as I walk along one of the straight litter-free pathways are the huge ball-shaped shrubs, a palm with its drooping fronds, and tables and chairs conveniently set under the cool shade of thick overhanging branches and foliage of perhaps mango trees.  The front door of a small single-storey traditional Chinese building is opened, revealing a huge statue of a seated Dongpo.  On the lintel of the entrance is a panel with the characters 欽師堂 (Qin Shuai Tang).  I enter.  Behind Dongpo is a framed white calligraphy with the words: 一代夂宗 (Yi dai zhi zong).  Robed in a light-blue gown, he is looking ahead.  His left hand reposes on the arm of the chair while his right hand is holding an unopened book.

Hanging on the surrounding walls are precious calligraphies and paintings, protected within glass showcases which also enclose and exhibit three tiers of small contorted rock.  These must be ancient rocks.  Did the avid rock collector pick them from the nearby beach and surrounding countryside during his meditative walks?

Noises echo from a second building nearby.  We walk towards it, to the assembly of thirteen.  They are filming a local television drama series, using the building as the background.  In dark-blue police uniforms with white epaulettes, two men in their thirties are standing on the entrance steps.  A third man of similar age is standing behind a table that is placed in front of the closed door.  Above the door is a black wooden signboard giving the name of the building: 迎賓堂 (Ying Bin Tang; Greeting-Guest Hall).  Obviously the villainous magistrate, the gentleman wearing a faked moustache, black hat, brown sunglasses, pale golden-yellow traditional Chinese shirt, and light-brown scholar gown rises from his seat behind his desk, and sings a judgement in local Danzhou dialect to a kneeling woman.  From different angles, two young men are filming with their hand-held videocameras.  Dressed informally and wearing a pair of slippers, a young lady is frequently checking her hand-held photometer, assessing the intensity of light.  Occasionally, she interrupts the recording and holds a discussion with the director, who has been silently looking through his script.

At one corner of the park is a life-size statue of Su Dongpo standing on a pedestal surrounded by hedges, which prevent me from touching it.  A stone tablet names this corner as “Western Park”.  This statue resembles the one in Wugong Temple.  The poses are identical.  The difference is only detectable when I examine the book held by Dongpo’s right hand.

The book in the Wugong statue is longer, its upper side reaching his shoulder.  It is stiff and appears to have come straight from the printing press.  The book in this statue is shorter, its upper side reaching his armpit.  It has been well-used.  The Wugong statue is made of fibreglass while the one in front of me is, according to the tablet, solid bronze.  Dongpo is wearing a bamboo hat and wooden sandals, the information continues.  Perhaps this statue is the prototype, of which the one in Wugong Temple is a copy.  

As we leave, I look once again at the pond and Beimen River.  I sense the awe which Dongpo must have felt during the final years of his life, the beauty of Hainan whispered in his poems.  The flowing water that quietly drains into the nearby bay soothes my soul.  It must have done so also on his.  Perhaps his Buddhist belief, fostered during his first exile, helped to ease his confused mind over his alternating banishments and reinstatements as the emperors and empress dowagers played political ping-pong over Wang Anshi’s socio-economic reforms for an apparently central-planning welfare state.


Ningji Temple, oldest Lady Xian Temple in Hainan
 

Ningji Temple is a kilometre off.  With the car twirling around the bends of the narrow and crowded streets in Zhonghe town, I soon lose my sense of direction and position.  Two-storey buildings whelm the sides.  Because of the tall trees and their arching branches and foliage, the street is slightly dark.  Make-shift stalls and waiting trishaws impede the traffic flow.  A big truck stops temporarily, worsening the congestion.  As we pause, I gaze out of the window.  The front verandahs of some houses are neatly stacked with short, cut branches, the economical but ecologically-detrimental firewood in village kitchens.  Our vehicle finally squeezes its way through.  As we approach the temple, the street is narrower and dusty.  

Even though his wife grew up here, Fu has not been to the temple.  He stops to seek direction.  On the second occasion, he spots his father-in-law, who is walking along the constricted unpaved lane that is wide enough for a truck to pass only when other vehicles have moved aside.  Reinforced with cobblestones of varying shapes and harden sand, the ground is uneven.  Fu parks his taxi by one side.

Without any layer of paint, the disintegrating plasterworks of external walls have exposed the bricks of some homes to atmospheric discoloration.  Six kids are goofing while one sits on a cobberstone in front of her house, holding a bowl of food.  A handsome cockerel and two dull-looking hens are milling, poising for scraps to spill.  Further down the lane, an elderly woman is walking towards us, hunched and dressed in dark-blue or black.  

Standing out from those surrounding aged-looking residences is the high, faded maroon wall and traditional green-tiled roof of the temple that I have come to see.  Its exterior suggests a home of an ordinary rich family within.  The compound measures about twenty metres by fifty metres.  Its entrance is guarded by two grey granite lion statues, their necks garlanded with red cords holding a tassel or peony bouquet.  Their fierce look is sufficient to repel any unfriendly goblin.

Above the entrance doors is the name of the temple in traditional Chinese: 寧濟廟 (Ning Ji Miao; Ningji Temple), a new name conferred by Gaozong, the first Southern Song emperor.

On the broad and solid entrance is a small guard room with its green-tiled roof and its pale-red balcony.  Four characters - 國史列傳 (Guoshi liezhuan; National historical biography) - are painted on the supporting beam of the roof.  I cannot help but speculate the need for a new coat of red paint.  Incidentally, red is an auspicious colour to Chinese; for it symbolizes blood, the summer of life.  Red dresses are worn during marriage ceremonies and banquets.  

Of the fifty or more temples in Hainan dedicated to the worship of Lady Xian, Ningji is the oldest.  It is more than a thousand years old because it was visited by Su Dongpo during his Hainan exile.  It was constructed probably as early as during the Tang dynasty, which began in 618 A.D. and ended in 907.  But the Ningji Temple that we are entering is in a sense not the “same” one that Dongpo had visited because the extant temple was, according to the Gazette of Danzhou in the Wanli period (Wanli Danzhou zhi, 1618), relocated to its present location in 1523.  

Awed by Xian Furen’s heroism, Dongpo wrote the following commemorative poem, lauding Mrs Feng Bao.   

 冯冼古烈妇，翁媪国于兹。

策勋梁武后，开府隋文时。

三世更险易，一心无磷缁。

锦伞平积乱，犀渠破余疑。

庙貌空复存，碑版漫无辞。

我欲作铭志，慰此父老思。

遗民不可问，偻句莫予欺。

犦牲菌鸡卜，我当一访之。

铜鼓葫卢笙，歌此送迎诗。
 

Feng Xian gulie fu, weng’aoguo yu zi.
Ce xun Liang Wu hou, kai fu Sui Wen shi.
Sanshi geng xian yi, yixin wu lin zi.  
Jin san ping ji luan, xi qu po yu yi.
Miao mao kong fu cun, bei ban man wu ci.
Wo yu zuo ming zhi, wei ci fulao si.
Yimin buke wen, lou ju mo yu qi.
Bo sheng jun ji bo, wo dang yi fang zhi.
Tonggu hulu sheng, ge ci songying shi.

 
Briefly, Su Dongpo made the following points: Mrs Feng-Xian, an indomitable lady of antiquity, was brave and loyal to the Liang, Chen, and Sui dynasties she served.  Through these three dynasties, she met dangers extinguishing rebellions and was thus highly honoured.  Though her temple now barely survived, he wished to sing in her praise this poem that he had just composed as he looked forward to observe the local elders offering sacrifices, reading the future from chicken entrails, and playing bronze drums and gourd pipes.

Two round red lanterns hang in front of the open door under the balcony of the overhead guard room.  From the entrance I spy a colourful square mural on the maroon wall ahead.  I enter the compound.  To my left is a small office; to my right is a moon gate to a courtyard, wherein stands a large golden statue of Lady Xian riding a horse.  The moon gate’s grille security fence is locked.

A quick glance tells me that this temple was not custom-built.  Like the temple at the northern edge of Songtao Reservoir, Ningji Temple occupies the compounds of two houses, which were, I believe, once residential homes.  The dividing wall of the two houses is intact.  But two gates in the wall, one being the moon gate, connect the two compounds.  The first compound is undivided by walls but the second is subdivided into two sections by a wall.  Although it is larger in area than the Songtao temple, this temple is smaller than that at Xinpo.    

I walk towards the square mural that I have seen from the entrance.  About one and a half metre in length, the relief in light-blue background depicts a mythical qilin, a horse-like animal with a dragon’s head.  Unfortunately, the paints of the multi-coloured fierce-looking creature are flaking off under the daily elements over the centuries.

On the sides of the mural is a couplet: 寿超千岁外；名列四虚中.  What the words say is mysterious to me.  Below the mural is a long, raised bed of flowering roses.  

To the left of the mural is a well, covered with safety netting.  Its name is announced in red on a black tablet placed against the wall: 太婆井 (Taipo Jing; literally, Great-grandmother’s Well).  Grey in colour, another tablet narrates an interesting legend, if not history.  This well, it avers, was built by Lady Xian when she first came to Hainan in the year 541 A.D. to quell a rebellion.  (Altogether, she made five trips to Hainan, the last just before her death.)

At Gaopo (High Slope, now Zhonghe), where she stationed her troops, she noticed the inhabitants suffering with symptoms of yellow faces and bloated stomachs, the result of drinking ditch water.  She searched and found a water spring, and rallied the people to build a well here.  Its clean and clear water supply is endless.

Except for a tall tree near the well and two rooms, the courtyard is neat but empty.  Its purpose is, I suppose, to serve as a reception hall for large numbers of visitors during festive occasions.  As I peer into the well, I can see its still water mirroring the branch and leaves above my head.  A couple of ancient bricks from its interior wall have dislodged and are lying in the watery depth.

On the short wall to my left is a round mural looking like a giant plate.  Placed between two scrolls of calligraphy, it displays in relief two colourful phoenixes chasing after each other in a circle.  Did the mural artist intend to convey the Buddhist notion of unity in duality through a “ring” of phoenixes?  Perceptively, the couplet poet succinctly lectured: 風調雨順; 國泰民安 (Fengtiaoyushun; Guotaimin’an; Good weather; Peace and prosperity).

Stepping into the other compound of the temple through the second gate in the dividing wall, I find myself in the hall of a small caretaker’s house, and I can see the Lady Xian altar at the end of the small courtyard.  Hanging on the lateral wooden beams of the covered corridor are two red globe lanterns, a bright-yellow plaque with a commemoration written by Gaozong in black, and a red scroll with the characters “巾幗英雄” (Jinguo yingxiong).  “Jinguo Heroine” is an ancient title ascribed to an outstanding heroine like Lady Xian and Hua Mulan.  Beneath the red scroll is an incense table with three censers, all of which have burning incenses and joss sticks.   

In the small hall behind the incense table is an altar table and a small statue of a seated Lady Xian, dressed in a colourful costume.  I am not permitted to photograph it.  It is considered sacred.  Perhaps too many people have photographed it to the extent of disrespect.  On the altar table are a small painted portrait of Lady Xian and another small statue of her.  I ask the caretaker about the artist.  He explains but his explanation is lost on me.  Lady Xian is depicted with her horse.  The lower halves of their bodies are not painted.  The background is light-green.  Both are in black-and-white since the color has faded.  The only other color is the red bouquet on the chest of the horse.

Unlocking a side gate, the caretaker leads me into the other half of the second compound, where the life-size statue of the horse carrying Lady Xian stands on a short, white rectangular pedestal.  It is fenced by a low railing and shaded from the hot sun by an acrylic awning.  Painted in gold, it looks new.  I drop the custodian a question on its composition and manufacturer.  The copper statue was made in Guangxi, he replies.  

This statue has similar features with the Xinpo statue: the two horses pose with their front left hooves raised, and both Lady Xians in their late thirties or early forties are attired in battle uniform, in armor and helmet.  The differences may not be obvious unless the spectator places both beside each other (in photographs at least) and compares them.  In the Xinpo statue, Lady Xian’s right hand holds an official insignia close to her face; here, her straight right hand holds a spear pointing downwards and towards her right.  In the Xinpo statue, her gaunt face manifests a serious expression; here, her round plump face is smiling.

Nine large stone panels upheld on low pedestals by the wall to Lady Xian’s left list her achievements and tributes to her while at the base of the wall to her right is a long stone slab supporting nine small statues of tribal leaders.  These basalt figures are archaeological relics, shifted from the “original” Ningji Temple.  They represent the nine tribal chiefs who submitted to Lady Xian’s authority during her official tours of Hainan, which was under her jurisdiction.  She faces them as they pay obeisance to her.  Eight are of equal size while the one in the middle is larger.  Displaying a defiant look, the largest native, the chief of the most populous and powerful tribe, is kneeling with his hands tied behind his back.  On his left and right, four are also kneeling but with their hands clasped in greeting.  The others are seated, also clasping their hands in greeting.   Their facial features are different; there was no artistic intention in sculpting identical faces.

Another antique in the courtyard is the large granite trough used by Lady Xian’s horse, according to the adjacent stone tablet.  I look into it; it has no water.  Located near the Lady Xian statue is another ancient well into which I almost fall.  It has no safety cover.  Perhaps it is a functioning well, its water drawn daily by the custodian.  He has been very patient with me, knowing that I will remain ignorant, despite his explanations.  He points to the remnant of an ancient decorative panel on the dividing wall.  It has been darken with age but still showing reliefs of leaves and flowers.

Hearing my literary ambition, he presents me with a slender booklet of short articles in Chinese on Lady Xian and the history of Ningji Temple.  I learn that it was the first Southern Song emperor who elevated Lady Xian (Xian Furen) to the status of an official deity with the noble title 显应夫人 (Xian Ying Furen; Lady not invoked in vain), which was - I suspect - a homophonic word-play on her maiden name “Xian Ying” (冼英).

Gaozong was well aware that she was not to be trifled with even in death, especially when anecdotes resounded of Li raiders from the central highland supplicating to her and then thanking her for their rich booties from Danzhou Han settlers!  Ironically, in his commemoration, the young emperor referred to the lady’s elimination of pirates from Hainan Island and the surrounding waters.  “Ning Ji”, which literally means “peaceful” and “crossing the river”, is an appropriate name for the temple dedicated to the venerated Lady of Danzhou (Dan’er Furen).    

A slow ten-minute drive through a narrow track brings us to Su Dongpo Well, located in a remote part of the town.  But for the stone tablet by its side, I would not be cognisant of its historical heritage.  Indeed, without a guide, a visitor would not even be able to locate it.  About a metre in diameter, this famous well was, of course, well constructed, each circular layer (or level) consisting, if my memory is accurate, of six bricks.  Because it is a circular well like all ancient Chinese wells, each brick, probably carved from local basalt rocks, is slightly convex (or concave, depending on one’s perspective) in shape.

About a metre below the ground surface, the water is clear but strewn with dry brown leaves blown from the tall bush hedge that almost surround the well.  I cannot see its depth, which I assume to be three or four metres.  Around the well is a low wall of about a metre in height to prevent people or stray animal from falling into it.  By the sides of its narrow entrance are two short pillars on which are pasted a couplet written on red rice paper.  

Seven young children - three girls and four boys - from the nearby houses are curious.  They are very friendly and happy.  They range in age from four to eight or nine.  Some are attending schools, they reply.  The boys sport tracksuit shorts and T-shirts, two girls wear one-piece dresses, and the oldest girl is in a tracksuit pant and a jumper.  They are neither living in poverty nor basking in wealth.  Their parents are probably farmers or stall owners in Zhonghe.

In contrast to Ningji Temple is a newly-renovated temple, a five-minute drive off.  It is only a hundred metres northwest of Ningji Temple as the crow flies.  We drop by only when Fu Si Ba casually asks if I wish to see it.

First built during the ninth Ming emperor’s reign five centuries ago, the temple honours Guan Yu, the brave general of Shu state during the Three Kingdom Period from 220 to 280 A.D.   He is one of the favourite heroes for Chinese enthralled by Luo Guanzhong’s fourteenth-century Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Admired for his strict sense of justice, loyalty, and righteousness, Guan Yu was deified as early as the Sui dynasty.  

Guan Gong (Lord Guan) or Guandi (Emperor Guan) Temple now stands in the middle of a large flat compound measuring about one hundred and fifty metres in length and fifty metres in width.  The empty foreground is a car park for pilgrims seeking favours or offering thanks to the God of War.  The rectangular entrance archway has the traditional green-glazed tiled roof, below which is a painting on a wooden beam of two green dragons floating on clouds.  Leaving our car, we walk towards the miniature three-metre high funerary pagoda, the repository for flaming joss papers.  

Guarding the temple precinct is a huge dark Guan Yu swaddled in armoured uniform on a pedestal in the hall.  Behind the hall, the ground has been developed into a landscaped park.  Everything here is new.  The two rows of palms and trimmed fir shrubs are evidence of intelligent planning.  A gazebo and a group of life-size unblemished marble statues of Taoist gods are recent inclusions.  

Antiquity lures me.  We leave and drive on.  Three minutes later, we are near the two surviving gates of Zhonghe’s ancient city wall; the other two had, unfortunately, been destroyed over the centuries by wars and land reclamation.  The two extant gates are located close to each other because the Tang-period city walls, built in 622 A.D., covered an irregular-square area with a parameter of one thousand and six hundred metres.  In short, each wall averages four hundred metres long, a sharp contrast to the rectangular 9.6-by-8 kilometre Chang’an capital.  The city within the Zhonghe walls was small.  Today, the streets remain narrow, and we have to walk.

My dreams of an idyllic rustic lifestyle take a tumble as I gingerly avoid the watery excrements splattered on the uneven cobblestone pavements by uninhibited buffaloes.  Can I live in one of these houses here, especially with its bedroom windows facing the lane?  Perhaps that buffalo tied under the first ancient arch is responsible for these agricultural treasures?  

On its overhead panel is its name painted in black: 武定门 (Wuding Men; Wuding Gate).  This is the north gate of the city fort.  A lonely hen stares nonchalantly at us as we walk by.  She will live blissfully through another day.  The defensive wall of the gate is so thick that hundreds of thousands of bricks must have been used in its construction.  A brown buffalo appears at the other end of the arch, pulling a wooden cart.  Sitting in front of the cart, the fat lady’s left hand pulls the rope that steers the animal.  It is inching but her sacks of goods will be delivered.  I stand aside as the beast advances.

Outside the city gate is undulating ground which does not lend itself to farming and is overrun by shrubs and weeds.  Two grey buffaloes are tied close to the wall.

Near the north gate is the west Zhenhai Gate (镇海门).  Shrubs and trees with invasive roots are gradually damaging the structures of these two gates.  The government is aware, and is embarking on a protection and upgrading program to preserve these historical and cultural relics as well as other relics in Hainan.  

Intriguingly, the seventh century fort city was preceded by another a few decades earlier, a smaller one nearby which was apparently inadequate for military defence.  Zhao Rugua (Wade-Giles: Chau Ju-kua), a custom inspector in Quanzhou, who wrote about the Chinese and Arab trade in his Zhufan Zhi (literally: Description of the Barbarous People) around 1225, devoted a short and interesting chapter on Hainan Island.

Historical records, he said, indicated that the Lady of Dan’er (Dan’er Furen), another appellation of Lady Xian, built the city of Dan’er within a city wall that was fourteen feet high and two hundred and twenty paces (bu), or about three hundred and thirty metres, in perimeter.

Lady Xian visited Zhonghe, the ancient capital of Dan’er, four times.  She died during the reign of the first Sui emperor, a decade before the crumble of the dynasty under its second.
 

Yangpu Port, ancient salt fields, and Baimajing
 

On the map, Yangpu Port is fifteen kilometres west of Zhonghe.  By road, the distance is longer – at least twenty-five kilometres.  Located on the northwestern coast of Hainan Island, Yangpu has a natural deep water harbour, ideal for the development of a modern port.  This potential was recognized even by Sun Yat-sen.

But internal and external chaos during the first half of the last century impeded its growth.  After national stabilisation, the pragmatic central leadership swiftly endorsed the transformation of the locale into a major port of Hainan.  The award of port development and seventy-year land lease to Kumagai Gumi was dogged by controversy, but fears of sovereignty loss were eventually allayed.

Occupying an area of thirty-one square kilometres, the Yangpu Free Trade Zone was launched in September 1993 with a projected resident population of two hundred and fifty thousand upon completion of the plan, and an anticipation of its rapid evolution into the largest power industrial base of Hainan and the largest oil and gas chemicals base of the South China Sea.

As we enter Yangpu town, I am excited, eager to see this newly industrialising region of Hainan.  Yangpu is a hundred and forty kilometres west of Haikou, and three hundred kilometres east of Hai Phong, the port of Vietnamese capital Hanoi.  With gradual industrialization of Vietnam and Hainan, trade between the two will increase.  And Yangpu is positioned to be the main port for this trade in Hainan.  If a canal is harrowed across Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, Yangpu Port and ultimately Hainan will boom exponentially with radiating intra-regional trade within Southeast Asia.  

That canal notion, which has engrossed the minds of many Thai futurists, also captivates my deliberation as we stop at a local stall, where we select our dishes for lunch.  It is quiet.  A young couple occupies one table while we occupy another.  The bill comes to 44 RMB, 28 RMB being the price of my large dish of beef pieces stir-fried with leek.  Fu’s shellfish soup cost only 10 RMB.  

Although four-lane wide, Gangwan Street is unmarked because the traffic is not heavy.  Sitting in our stationary car as Fu searches for something in his glove compartment, I see only two trucks, two vans, and one private car parked by the kerb to my left.  In motion are a trishaw and two or three motorists.  On my side of the road, a truck parked directly in front of us blocks my view of the vehicles in front of it.  I counted nine persons altogether.

This is surprising because I expect a busy thoroughfare, especially one that is located next to a port.  The boom time has obviously not materialised yet.  Coconut trees have been paced at regular intervals along both kerbs.  The two or three eight-storey residential blocks are new; their light-blue paint is fresh and unspotted.  With balconies facing the road, the higher units offer their dwellers opportunities to witness the bustling port activities below.  

Yangpu Seaview Garden Hotel is at the end of the road.  It sits on a promontory that faces Baimajing, the nearest town across the bay.  Its two-storey administration building is clean and modern.  On both sides of its entrance, the large green fronds of tall palms and colourful flags on poles blend with its white front wall.  The guest rooms are in a five-storey building on its side.  Its courtyard is tiled and spacious.  Only a few cars are parked here.  Perhaps the others are hidden in the basement beneath the courtyard.  In front of the hotel porch, two private cars are waiting for their owners; their chauffeurs are standing by the door, one talking on his hand phone.  Walking across the courtyard are two men.  

Directly above the reception is the restaurant, where three men are seated partaking their lunch around one of the dining tables on its balcony.  I walk into the reception and enquire their daily rate.  It is 298 RMB.  Not expensive, I say to myself.  I walk out to the safety railing of the courtyard.  Below me is a garden since the hotel is built on undulating land.  Before me is Baimajing, which is less than a kilometre southeast of Yangpu.  These two towns will be linked by a bridge in the near future, according to the poster on a huge billboard.

Four academics from Hunan University Wind Engineering Research Center have been studying the model of the proposed bridge.  It is a cable-stayed bridge with a main span of 460 metres long and an adjacent continuous span of 180 metres in length on each side.  With a 31.4-metre width, its central six lanes will be flanked by a narrow pedestrian lane.  This short bridge will naturally cut by several-fold the travelling distance and time, which is currently about thirty-five kilometres and thirty minutes respectively.  

Two huge concrete foundations for the bridge have been emplaced in the seabed, each close to the land mass near the ends of the bridge.  The one just a hundred metres ahead obstructs a small temple’s view of the bay.  Probably dedicated to goddess Mazu, this temple - almost in front of me - has a longer history in this area, its preservation hints to its historical heritage and significance.  For hundreds of years, fishermen, sailors, and merchants from passing ships would have stopped here and prayed for their safe voyages.

Seven big ships are anchored in the bay to my left, blocking my vision of smaller ones behind them.  On the long wharf to my right are several huge dull-red inactive cranes.  Their expected loads are perhaps still snugged in foreign ports.  In their midst is a grain silo, which looks like several inverted rockets fused together, about two hundred metres from where I stand.  (In April 2014, the Hainan Yangpu Bridge was opened to traffic.  Its northern end runs between this hotel and wharf.)  Trampling around the region that will emerge as the major port of Hainan in the coming years staggers me.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, Fu and I drive for about eight kilometres to the entrance of “Ancient Saltern”, which we have earlier passed.  Although it is listed on the map as the location of the ancient Salt Fields (Yantian) Village, the sentry informs us that the site is now a golf course, closed to the public.  We can, however, still see ancient salt fields close to where we have just departed from, namely, a kilometre and a half north of the hotel.  I later learn that the golf course was designed also by Graham Marsh.  This Australian has certainly made his mark on Hainan Island!  We reverse and return to Yangpu town, to the corner of 308 Provincial Road and Yangpu Ninth Road.  

Covering seven hundred and fifty acres of coastline in this district, salt fields were established one thousand two hundred years ago during the Tang dynasty by salt workers dispatched from Fujian Province.  When they disembarked, they patiently collected local volcanic boulders larger than half a metre in diameter, which they then saw into halves.  With their flat surfaces facing skywards, low cement rims were carefully crafted around the edges, transfiguring them into shallow miniature ponds.

More than a thousand of these cut boulders were then shattered near the tidal zones where, over the centuries, the residents toiled, pouring into these rock pans saltwater collected during high tides.  When the water had evaporated under the hot sun, salt crystals were formed, which they scraped for storage and sale.  Today, only about thirty families continue this tradition, extracting the very basic preservative of food at no cost from nature.

Our drive to Baimajing town takes a long detour along the road that passes through Zhonghe, because a short initial section of 315 Provincial Road has been cordoned off for upgrading.  A motorcyclist, however, uses the narrow and slippy, muddy side track to continue his journey.

From that experience, I realize that an efficient itinerary requires a start from Yangpu and finish at Baimajing, or vice versa.  Being in-between, Zhonghe should be second on the list, not first.

Baimajing sprung from Ma Yuan’s garrison protecting the well (jing) built upon the spring discovered by his white horse (bai ma) during his mission here in 41 A.D.  Born in 14 B.C., the famous general lived through the brief Xin (New) dynasty (9-23 A.D.) of usurper Wang Mang, the former Western Han regent, whose socio-economic reforms like land redistribution created intense resentment among aristocrats and whose diplomatic gaffes created territorial enemies.  During his turbulent rule, internal dissidents and warlords revolted while outlying tributaries like the Xiongnu and the northern Vietnamese seceded.

After the usurper’s death in a battle in 23 A.D., Ma Yuan’s military career, dedicated to restoring the Han dynasty, saw him fighting against native rebels and secessionists in Annam (now northern Vietnam), Hainan, Guizhou, and Hunan.  He died in 49 A.D. from plague contracted during an expedition in Hunan.  His ten-year old youngest daughter would become second Western Han emperor Ming’s empress.  

Two thousand years later, Baimajing was selected as a military landing site again, this time for the Communist battalions.  By the end of 1949, they had control of the mainland but not Hainan.

In early 1950, more than two thousand junks and one hundred thousand troops assembled at Leizhou Peninsula, ready for action, while the fifteen thousand local communists harassed and distracted the KMT troops.  In March, the first wave of thirteen junks conveying eight hundred troops sailed to two destinations, one of which was Baimajing and the other on the east coast.  However, many misjudged their location, landing at the KMT stronghold and were destroyed.

Mistakenly believing that the landed beach was the intended site for the main attacking force, the KMT quickly reinforced that position with nearby forces.  The second wave of ships with larger forces safely reached their scheduled destinations, including one about three kilometres south of Baimajing.  With the coordinated movements of these forces and local communists, the main body captured Hainan a month later.  

A few kilometres before the historic town, the shoulders of the alternative road are intermittently littered with bricks of demolished homes.  New houses or blocks of flats will rise in their place, distinguishing them from the pre- or post-war houses whose owners are too poor to rebuild or renovate.  In the town, the houses are generally aged; they are dull and unpainted.  Fewer people are walking in the narrow streets, hinting to a population of less than a hundred thousand.  But that will change in the coming decades with improved infrastructure and industrialisation of Yangpu.

For his notable achievements, Ma Yuan was deified in many temples in Guangdong and Hainan.  In the outskirt of Baimajing town is one, named after his official title 伏波古廟 (Fubo Gu Miao; Suppressing-Waves Ancient Temple).  Composed of hard sand, the lane to this temple is spacious for two cars, and the pre-war homes are single-storey while the post-war buildings are generally two-storey with the ground floors functioning as shops and the higher floors as residence.

On the sidewalk outside the temple entrance are two men practising and coordinating their beats on large and heavy drums.  One, in his thirties, is wearing a shirt, yellow track-shorts, and slippers; the other, in his twenties, is wearing a black long-sleeved shirt, black pants, and shoes.  Looking intensely at them are four children ranging in age from four to nine.  Fortunately, the temple door is open, permitting us to enter.

Although the temple has a long history, its three single-storey buildings are new.  They are placed one behind the other.  The first two are houses, which probably accommodate the caretaker and his family, while the last is the altar hall.  Because the middle building has no front or back door but only moon gates, a visitor standing at the temple entrance can see the altar building at the rear.  

The first house forms part of the front wall of the temple compound.  Its front door is the front door of the temple; its hall is the entrance of the temple.  The brown bricks of the external front wall are clean, without any smudges or vestiges of weathering.  In the hall are two square tables, around which eight people are seated, busy in the game of mah-jong.  Three or four spectators are standing behind some of them, peering at their standing rows of plastic mah-jong tiles.  We courteously greet them, which they reciprocate.

Forming the rear wall of the compound, the altar building is empty except for the altar of the statues, some wooden sofa for tired supplicants, and some small religious paraphernalia.  The offerings in front of the two divines are outlandish.  They include two traditional Chinese junks made of metal but painted in gold.  They must be precious because they are wrapped with transparent plastic sheets.  I cannot believe my eyes: the smaller god is wearing a pair of spectacles.  Someone is mischievous.  I point this out to Fu; he laughs.

The famed White Horse Well is kept within a locked section of the compound.  Because the ground around the well had been raised into a concrete platform of half a metre in height for ritual convenience, a square well of a metre in depth was constructed on top of the ancient round well for safety reason.  The water is still clear but littered with some empty plastic drink bottles left by inconsiderate visitors.  In front of the well are a small altar and censer for praying pilgrims to insert their burning incense sticks.

Much of Baimajing town sits on a small triangular cape, which “points” to Yangpu Seaview Garden Hotel across the bay.  From Fubo Temple to the wharf on the eastern side of the cape’s tip is a distance of half a kilometre, requiring only a few minutes’ drive.  The large acreage on the western side is inaccessible, I am told, the old godowns and residences being in the process of clearance to receive the southern end of the bridge.  When this piece of infrastructure is completed, the life in both towns on Danzhou Bay will be transformed.

An excavator is at work on the dilapidated godowns on the eastern side.  The operator’s motor scooter is parked beside it.  Soil has been dug and piled up; broken bricks are scattered here and there.  The land is uneven.  After hearing my purpose, the security officer at the fenced work site kindly permits me to enter to record the harbour activities.

Carefully, I make my way to the edge of the Baimajing wharf.  Here, despite the mist and some intervening ships, I can still clearly see the shoreline of Yangpu town.  I readily spot Seaview Garden Hotel and several new twelve-storey residential blocks.  A Chinese patrol boat “789” is parked at the Yangpu wharf.  On my far left, three men are boarding their floating pontoon measuring about three metres in length and half a metre in width.  One is standing to give directions while the other is paddling to reach their small fishing trawlers.  One hops onto a boat anchored a short distance off while another climbs onto a boat anchored about twenty metres in front of me.  The paddler returns, ties his light wooden board to a stake close to the wharf, and jumps onto the wharf.  It is an ingenious way of getting to one’s boat.  

Located on the northwestern coast of Hainan, the Baimajing harbour is sheltered from the eastern typhoons from July to October.  The port is one of China’s five important fishing centres.  Qinglan on the east and Sanya on the south are among the five.  Fishing is becoming an increasingly important industry, which has only just been emerging from a predominantly agricultural base.  The opportunity for expansion is tremendous because Hainan is the only Chinese province with administration over two million square kilometres of sea area, and a fishing ground of some three hundred and forty-five square kilometres around the island.

At present, the annual catches total approximately one hundred thousand tons, which is half of the potential from the deep water ranging in depth from a hundred to two hundred metres.  Groupers, hairtails, pomfret, Spanish mackerel, tuna, abalone, lobsters, turtles, sea cucumber, and sea horses are among the major species hauled.  Besides fish, local fishermen also pull up prawns and shellfish.  

Aquaculture is a profitable industry.  The seawater temperature of about twenty-one degrees Celsius is conducive to fish breeding while the nutrients in the five to ten metres depth of immediate surrounding clean seawater provide building blocks for baits, the food for large predators.  From mid-May until the end of July, the annual summer ban is enforced on commercial fishing in South China Sea.  While providing time for fish to spawn and mature, it also offers respite for coastal villagers to repair their boats, nets, and gears and prepare for the coming fishing season.  This ban partly explains the congregations of fishermen and also farmers in local teahouses, killing their free time through gossiping and gaming.  

Fishing villages dot every habitable shore.  The Lin’gao coast is no exception.  Lin’gao is the adjoining county east of Danzhou.  Its port at Houshui Bay is forty kilometres northeast of Baimajing.  Huanglong Port is scheduled by the government for development into the best and largest fishing port on the island.  It will have three parts – front, centre, and back – with a total sea of nine hundred and fifty thousand square metres.  Ranging in depth from six metres at the entrance, five metres at the front and middle sectors, and four metres at the rear, it will be the deepest port.  Its reconstruction would protect up to three thousand fishing vessels sheltering from the strongest typhoon with a 12-force.  Its front part will host facilities like cold storage, water supply, oil store dock, and marine products factories.  The new port is near the huge Beibu Bay fishing field.  

 
Lanyang hot springs and Lanyang Lotus Temple

 
From coastal Baimajing, we swing inland to Lanyang, about twelve kilometres southeast of Danzhou downtown.  Lanyang (Blue Ocean) is one of the seven hot spring tourist zones in Hainan.  The others are Guantang and Jiuqujiang in Qionghai, Xinglong in Wanning, Qixianling in Baoting, and Nantian and Fenghuang in Sanya.  The distribution of thirty-four hot springs throughout the island attests to the violent volcanic activities a few thousand years past.

According to geologists, a five-hundred metre well plunged into any spot on the island would provide an ample supply of hot water of at least forty degrees Celsius heated by fiery magma.

At Lanyang, the presence of these natural springs, over a dozen, in an area of about two square kilometres enhances the suburb as the largest hot spring playground of Hainan.  In response to booming tourist demand, the Lanyang Hot Spring Park (蓝洋温泉公园; Lanyang Wenquan Gongyuan) was established in 1999.  There, apparently, visitors can experience a strange phenomenon, encountered by others through the centuries: two springs a metre apart, one hot while the other cold.  The temperature of the hot spring can exceed ninety degrees Celsius while the cold spring is extremely cold.  The cold spring is, perhaps, located near the ground surface, thus avoiding deep subterranean scorching.  Although Fu and I give the park a miss because of time constraint, Xue Xin and I briefly explore it during my fourth trip in 2013.  But I cannot find the “cold and hot springs”.

Miniature “wells” are constructed over hot spring outlets for park visitors to boil their eggs and cook their “hot pots” in the bubbling mineral water, which is rich in bromine, fluorine, lithium, silicate, strontium, zinc, and other trace elements.  Some of the “wells” are dry, indicating the natural change in water flow.

Within the park is a group of life-size statues of seven slender ladies in different poses in a shallow pool near a slope with green shrubs and trees and even miniature cliff.  Three ladies are seated in the middle, playing musical instruments like the Chinese bamboo flute and guzheng.  Two are standing beside them.  The sixth is reclining at one end of the pool, listening to the silent music.  The last is sitting upright, bathing in nude.  

Averaging slightly above seventy-eight degrees Celsius, the spa water in Lanyang and other Hainan resorts is free of sulphurous odour, and is purportedly good for relieving rheumatoid joints, skin diseases, and cardiovascular system ailments.  In addition to the existing hotels, new constructions are evident for citizens to ride on the prosperity wave.  A zoo is in planning.

Three kilometres south of this rural town is a Guanyin temple known as Lanyang Lotus Temple (蓝洋莲花寺; Lanyang Lianhua Si).  On our way, Fu Si Ba and I pass some oncoming cars and, upon reaching Lanyang Village on our left, we turn right into a short sandy track that ends at a foothill.

Clinched onto the levelled cliff of a small hill is a Buddhist temple, which has almost been completed.  The scaffolding is still there.  The area is deserted; the workers have probably left because it is past five in the late afternoon.  With two tiers of curved brown-tiled roof, the Guanyin temple is a small maroon temple of about five or six metres in height.  Stilts of various lengths, hammered into solid cliff rocks, buttress the outer edges of the religious edifice.  

Looking intensely, I sense a familiarity.  It then dawn upon me.  Yes, this is a replica of the famous Hanging Temple (悬空寺; Xuankong Si) at Hengshan in Shanxi Province.  Hengshan is one of the five sacred mountains for Daoists, who flock to its peak during their annual pilgrimage.  Replacing the temple destroyed in a flood, the extant building was constructed during the Qing era.

A wooden plank gangway erected on the hill slope directly leads to the right side of the precariously-perched Lanyang temple.  Probably a temporary gangway for the workers, it will be removed once the work has been completed.  I will not tempt fate walking on the unstable planks to get a closer view of the temple.  The normal entrance seems to be through a cave on the right side of the foothill.  I am standing on the narrow path that leads to this cave.  It is dark and I am too scared to enter and explore.

Obviously, the temple courtyard is very narrow, more like a balcony when the safety railing has been installed.  At eight or ten metres above ground level, it will overlook a three-metre deep pond, which is now a deep hole dug into the ground.  A puddle of rainwater collects at the deeper end.  Hovering over the water of this pond is a concrete bridge leading to the foothill on the left side of the temple.

Mid-way on the bridge stands a small, exquisite three-level pavilion with two tiers of sweeping brown-tiled roof for visitors to pause and admire the temple and the lotus pond.  When completed this temple will be a major attraction of Lanyang.  

(During my fourth trip, Cai Hong, Xue Xin, and I visit this temple during a drizzling morning.  The wooden walkway, about a metre and a half in width, has been replaced with a similar one made of cut bamboo stems tied with thin wires.  The gate at the cave is shut, leaving us with no choice but to slowly inch ourselves to the hall, holding onto the iron bar on our left for safety.  One slip, and we might find ourselves hurtling off the escarpment and down into the deep green pool.  At the altar, festooned with penitents’ offerings, is a golden statue about one metre and a half high of Guanyin sitting on a lotus petal.  Its pedestal is about waist-high.  Her right hand is slightly raised, her palm facing the front with her middle finger and her thumb making an “O” sign.  Resting on her crossed legs, her left hand holds a slender vase, a vase perpetually overflowing with blessings for the seekers.)

Rain trickles, and the track is becoming muddy.  I propose to Fu that we leave.  Danzhou offers other interesting features.  Twenty-five kilometres south of Lanyang town are some of the most scenic views of Hainan: the mountains, gullies, precipitous cliffs, rivers, waterfalls, and lakes.  Tourists can climb to the accessible summits and survey the surrounding valleys and green rainforests.  Many of the caves remain unexplored.  Unfortunately, I have no time.  It is almost seven in the evening when Fu and I reach Danzhou downtown.  

During my third trip in 2012, Xue Xin and his friend Chen Ze Chi (陈泽赤) drive my younger brother Hee Hung and me to Danzhou.  Unsure of the location of Shihua Karst Cave (石花水洞; Shihua Shui Dong; literally, Stone Flower Water Cave), Xue Xin phones his friends in Nada for direction.  When we arrive in town, it is past noon.  Graciously, Wan Jun (万俊), a Danzhou City government official, and his colleague Zhang Jing Yuan (张静媛) welcome and lead us to the park located thirty kilometres west of Nada.

We have just enough time to explore part of the limestone cave on foot as well as take a ride in a small boat through the tunnel and out to the small lake, the ticketing officer reassures.  Illuminated by lights, the stalactites and stalagmites, well protected behind wire nettings, reflect spectacular colours, the results of their chemical stains.  The young female cave guide explains further features.  A patch of purple crystals that look like amethyst fascinates me.

Then with four of us sitting on the long bench on each side of a small boat, the boatman slowly nudges it through a narrow tunnel with a long pole, an indication of the shallow water, although we still don the safety floats as suggested.  Interestingly, weathering of this low-lying limestone region over the millennium has created unusual features, including a two-metre high rock formation that shapes like a penis!  We all depart from the park, in mirth.

Staying overnight at a local hotel, the four of us (Xue Xin, Ze Chi, Hee Hung, and I) leave the following morning for Songtao Reservoir, one of the ten largest in China.  We are early.  According to the signboard information, construction of this lake on the upper reaches of Nandu River began in 1958 and was completed a decade later.  Its regular storage capacity is almost 2.6 billion cubic metres, and the water that can be used is slightly more than two billion cubic metres (or two thousand billion litres).  The surface area of the reservoir is about fifty-eight square kilometres.  

Fish culture is legally permitted.  Two huge floating cages of the famous Songtao fish are anchored a hundred metres from the shore.  The ferry-ride across the lake does not commence until twelve-thirty noon.  Besides us, six other passengers embark the small ferry, which can seat between twenty and thirty people.  A young Mandarin-speaking guide is also on board.

Our boat stops by the side of one floating cage and the two ferry operators jump onto its broad wooden frame.  About six metres in length, each square cage is made of wooden planks tied upon sealed empty drums, which keep them buoyant.  The wooden frame is subdivided with other planks, again tied on empty drums.  Each subdivision holds a deep net in which fish of a specific size are reared.  

Here the main fish species cultured are the Silver Carp (Hypophthalmichthys harmandi sauvage) that is indigenous to the lake and the Grass Carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella).  With the aid of the breeder who comes in a small sampan, they pull up the net of a small subdivision.  The breeder seizes two flapping Grass Carps, each time with his bare hands.  The operators assist by clubbing them on their heads with a wooden club.  They then leave them on the front deck; the two will be our lunch.  

Unlike the large cruise boat with an upper deck and cooking facilities for seventy or more passengers, ours is small and lunch will be prepared at the outdoor kitchen of a house located at a far end of the irregular-shaped reservoir.  The slow journey takes slightly more than an hour but compensates with beautiful scenes of undulating hills masked with evergreen trees, clear blue sky painted with some white swirling clouds, and clean and calm water.

Like me, the middle-aged couple from Fujian are interested in nature, frequently snapping pictures.  But in their mid-twenties, the three men and their female companion are focussed on their card game.

More floating cages are ensconced close to the shore of our destination.  As soon as we land, the couple living there slice the carps into cutlets and dump them into the prepared soup that is flavoured with sea grass gathered from the reservoir.  This is the same grass consumed by the herbivorous Grass Carps.  Despite my reservation, the grass turns out to be delicious; so too are the fish cutlets.  The crunchy deep-fried Grass Carp fries, caught earlier by them, are also savoury; they are my favourite.  After lunch, the boat returns by the same route.

With still some daylight left, although less than two hours, Xue Xin takes us to the Tropical Botanical Garden (热带植物园; Redai Zhiwuyuan), which is located about five kilometres west of Nada.  It is along our way back to Haikou.  Because the park covers thirty-two hectares of land, a young female guide conducts us through the more interesting tropical trees like the fruit trees, medicinal trees, and rare trees.  This garden, established in 1958, was part of South China University of Tropical Agriculture (which was later restructured as the Danzhou Campus of Hainan University).  

Among the trees we admire are Dimocarpus longan, Liquidambar formosana, Erythrophleum fordii, Manglietia hainanensis, Euodia leptia, Radermachera hainanensis, Mimusops elengi, and the most deadly Antiaris toxicaria lesch (commonly known as the Poison Arrow Tree, which I have seen in Yanoda Rainforest Cultural Zone).

Before we leave, the girl shows us a small bush.  Its mysterious purplish grape-size fruit will create havoc with one’s taste buds when it is chewed: the sour lemon juice that one subsequently drinks will be very sweet!  I learn its botanical name: Synsepalum dulcificum.

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Shilu     石碌   “Toilsome Rock”

Remembering the Chinese and also the Australian and Allied
prisoners-of-war who toiled under the Japanese invaders
of Hainan Island during the Second World War