Rambling around my ancestral Hainan

Chapter 3

North Coast - Navigating Around Haikou City

Lady Xian (Xian Furen) and her temple in Xinpo
 

Waking to the cue of melodious music in early dawn, Jo goes out, fully equipped with her huge camera bag, after my brief about the park.  An hour later, she returns fully satisfied.  Ever since winning first prize - a $1,000 photographic store voucher - in our city council’s photographic competition, she has been inspired to experiment with her newly-acquired single-lens reflex Canon and its wide-angle and close-up lenses.  

Xue Xin and Cai Hong pick us up for lunch.  Jinshuimen (Golden Water Gate) Seafood Restaurant is situated on the southern tip of Xinbu Island, the islet lying to the right of Haidian Island.  From Changdi Road, we cross the two-hundred metre bridge into Xinbu Avenue and immediately turn left.  We are guided to the floating platform, where the sea view of the Nandu River mouth is nothing but spectacular.  A couple sitting three tables away are the only other patrons.  Strange for a Saturday afternoon, but the reason soon becomes apparent.

Four large prawns weighing half a kilogram cost 128 RMB; a crab of about the same weight costs 118 RMB; and a fish head of about seven hundred and fifty grams costs 148 RMB.  Together with an assortment of vegetables, the steamboat adds to a staggering 673 RMB ($135), about a third or half of the waitress’ monthly wage.  It is too expensive even for the two of us dining out in Australia.  The “Tian Di No 1 Apple Vinegar”, actually apple cider, is also expensive, at 22 RMB.  In an Australian supermarket, a bottle of apple cider sells for only A$2 (about 12 RMB).  Of course, ambience costs money.

 After lunch, Xue Xin leaves us at the intersection of Haifu and Lantian Road.  Their house is a few streets away.  Soon he and his friends will be driving their jeep to Yunnan, using the ferry service at Haikou Ferry Terminal and the land route across Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces.  We catch Bus No. 1 to Haikou East Station along Haifu Road.  The fare is 1 RMB each.  In red shirt, a boy of fifteen offers me his seat, corroborating the general civility of the younger Hainanese generation.  Coaches bound for Wenchang, Qionghai, Lingshui, and so forth are available at the station.  But finding no bus or coach to Xinpo, a town thirty kilometres south of Haikou, Cai Hong hails a taxi.

What follows confounds me.  She tells the driver our destination and, on receiving her assenting nod, we get in.  As the taxi takes off, the friendly haggling begins.  Hainanese Lady Driver quotes 250 RMB ($50) for the return journey and an hour of waiting time.  Sitting in the front seat, Cai Hong is a tough negotiator - 200 RMB (S$40).  Madam Driver makes a phone call, presumably to her company.  After a few more minutes of banter, they settle on the price of 200 RMB.  Knowing your terrain does wonder.  I am actually willing to pay 250 RMB.  

Travelling along S81 Expressway, we pass a sign “Xinpo 20 km” after ten minutes.  The straight expressway with two lanes in each direction is lined with trees.  In front of us, two trucks are occupying both lanes, thus preventing us from overtaking.  Two cars are following behind.  Sitting on the right side of the rear seat, I snatch glimpses of paddy fields on the right.  Then in range is a huge vegetable farm with an estimated size of four square kilometres, two kilometres on each side.

After thirty minutes, we exit into a narrow dusty two-lane road.  A Sinopec petrol station and a police station are on our left.  The single-storey houses on each side of the road, punctuated with some double-storey homes, appear so close to one another.  A triple-storey house on our left is under construction, the bricks and gravels piling by the kerb.  Workers and kids are walking along the road, or crossing it.  Parked cars, motorcycles, auto rickshaws, and trucks render the road even narrower for the moving vehicles, which inch their way toward their destination.  Accustomed to the wide expanse of Hainan, I now feel claustrophobic.  What an unwelcoming entrance to the compound of Xinpo Xian Furen Temple!

Visitors can be forgiven for thinking that Lady Xian is an Indian goddess.  About two metres in height, the statue of her riding her mare is placed on a square concrete platform that is one metre high in front of the temple compound.  The statue is covered with soot from burnt joss papers and incense sticks over the decades.  When I draw closer, I notice that the statue is carved from a single chunk of rock.  Whether it is granite in composition is impossible to tell, the patina obscuring my examination.

With her left foreleg raised apparently in greeting, the mare is looking down at me, smiling.  Her eyes are wide, and her face feminine.  On her forehead is a pink flower with eight open petals.  Her bridle and the designs on Lady Xian’s dress and crown are painted in gold.  A red decorative brocade ribbon is wrapped around her neck.  In contrast, Lady Xian, in her thirties, is expressionless.  Focussed on the horizon behind me, she holds upright an imperial insignia, which shapes like a miniature cricket bat on which is an engraved Chinese character.  Her lips are painted pink.

It is a tradition to insert 20 RMB under the horse’s hoof, an eighteen-year old boy persistently claims.  When Cai Hong tells the scruffy lad that she will consult the temple keeper, he reduces the amount to 10 RMB.  Sensing a scam, I brush him off but he returns later.  We ignore him.  And he duly leaves us alone.

Jo explores the compound, clicking at the trees, leaves, flowers, and old quarters in the hope of capturing something captivating for future photo competitions.  While I am also photographing Lady Xian, six young kids, ranging in age from five to eleven, are observing our activities out of curiosity.  In casual clothing, they walk around in slippers.  They are adorable, and I briefly ponder over their future in this small town.

Three old ladies are sitting in the temple courtyard near its front entrance, talking.  Tempting though it may be, I refrain from uttering the impolite question in my mind: are you living at the quarters within the temple compound?  My guess is that they are.  I smile and ask some questions which I believe to be innocuous like their age; the last thing I want to do is to offend any of them.  Madam Cheng is ninety and frail.  Her mental faculty is still perfect.  Xu and Zi are both seventy.  Outside the courtyard entrance is a portable table of incense sticks and joss papers.  Cai Hong purchases some incense sticks and joss paper for 20 RMB from the seller, a man in his late forties, who has been plying his trade for several years.

After we have contributed into the donation box within the temple, a custodian assists Cai Hong in lighting her long yellowish-brown incense stick and embedding it in the middle censer before a smaller icon of a seated Lady Xian.  Made perhaps of porcelain, the icon is half a metre in height.  Except for her young and smooth face and hands, she is draped in a pink costume with embroidered designs in blue, light-blue, and green colours.  The light-blue tinsels sparkle, and the light-brown or golden tassels add colour to her outfit.  In matching colours, her headdress has two long, thin peacock feathers.  Around her are smaller, inconspicuous figurines of lesser deities.

Closing her eyes, my niece reverentially bows her head and prays to the goddess.  Half a metre in diameter, the greyish earthen censer is compacted with ashes of burnt incense sticks.  In it are six other lighted sticks similar in length to the one which Cai Hong is holding.  The large censer is flanked by two smaller ones, each holding two burning red joss candles.  In compliance with the religious instructions, Cai Hong lights two smaller incense sticks and plants them into the square stone receptacle in the courtyard.  Her joss paper is, however, lit by the custodian and dropped into a huge iron cauldron.  A couple walks into the temple with the same set of divine offerings.  Except for us here, the temple compound is empty.  

Lady Xian’s birthday celebration will however attract a huge crowd the following month.  Lasting four days from the twelve of the second lunar month, the annual Junpo Festival honours the national heroine and maternal Li ancestor of the Feng clan.  This special event, especially for the Li people, is an ancient tradition supported in many towns and districts in Hainan and Guangdong.  Since we are a month early, we miss the spectacle of exciting lion dances and Yangge dances with accompanying firecrackers, gongs, and drums.  We also miss the sweet potatoes and yams baked by families praying for peace and prosperity in the island.

Born in 512 (or 520 in some accounts), the heroine-goddess was lauded in the Chinese historical texts History of the Sui (隋书; Sui shu) and History of the Northern Dynasties (北史; Bei shi) as “Lady Xian” (冼夫人; Xian Furen).  “Xian” (冼) was the name of her Li ethnic clan, which was the most prominent in Nanyue (Southern Yue), the area comprising southern Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam.  To fully appreciate her contribution to Chinese history and culture, we should recall the social milieu of her times.

Modern China, as we have seen earlier, includes the provinces of Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan.  But during the pre-Qin period these southern territories were “no-man’s land”, sparsely populated by about six million people from non-Han ethnic communities, whom the northerners regarded as uncultured barbarians.  When they captured that vast region, the Qin and Han emperors were only able to exercise tenuous control over some parts.  The myriad territorial and political problems in the north, which sustained the majority (about ninety percent) of the subjects, preoccupied and precluded them from meddling in the distant south.

Emperor Ling’s death in 189 A.D. led to debilitating conflicts among his family, court eunuchs, and powerful ministers and officials for three decades.  Finally, in 221 A.D., the (Eastern) Han dynasty collapsed.  A two-hundred year period of instability followed, in which kingdoms were established and then destroyed.  Initially, China was split into three parts:  General Cao Cao’s Wei Empire in the north (roughly above Yangzi River), the Sun family’s Wu Empire in the south (roughly below Yangzi River), and Liu Bei’s Shu Han Empire in the centre (in Shu, the ancient name of Sichuan).

After usurping his Wei emperor’s throne in 265 A.D., General Sima Yan conquered the Wu Empire.   For some time, his large Jin Empire (often referred to as the “Western Jin” because of the western site of its capital Luoyang) dominated over a large part of China.  On its fringes were the successive smaller kingdoms.  This is the period historically termed as the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms.  These short-lived kingdoms were: Han Zhao (Xiongnu, or Huns), Later Zhao, Cheng Han, Former Liang, Later Liang, Northern Liang, Western Liang, Southern Liang, Former Yan, Later Yan, Northern Yan, Southern Yan, Former Qin, Later Qin, Western Qin, and Xia.

Posthumously titled as “Emperor Wu” (“Martial Emperor”), Sima blundered, dividing his empire among his twenty-five sons, which soon led to infighting.  One foolishly invoked the assistance of the Huns, whose leader, exploiting the internal weakness, invaded northern China in 316.  The Western Jin court fled southwards and established the southern Jin dynasty (or “Eastern Jin” because of its capital at Nanjing).  Although it was subject to attacks from the north, this dynasty held until 420 A.D. when the regent seized the young emperor’s crown.

The upstart initiated the first of the four minor (“Southern”) dynasties: Liu Song (420-479 A.D.), Southern Qi (479-502 A.D.), Liang (502-557 A.D.), and Chen (557-589 A.D.).

From 420 to 589 A.D., a period of one hundred and seventy years of disunity and conflict among the Northern and Southern Dynasties was inflicted on the vast land.  In the north, the accumulated wealth attracted non-Han invaders.  Victorious and intermarrying with the subdued people, the conquerors assimilated their culture and language.  While many Hans remained in their ancestral homes and secured employment as officials in the new bureaucracy, some even attaining high positions over time, the stream of northern Han refugees across Yangzi River was unceasing.  They followed the displaced Han royals and officials, who founded their own dynasties in the land south.

Combined with diseases, famines, and natural mortality, these wars limited the growth of population in China over the seven centuries from the beginning of the Common Era.  In 742 A.D., the figure remained at almost sixty million.  Only in 1100 A.D. did it rise to one hundred million as a result of the expansion of rice cultivation.  

In southern China, the Southern Qi dynasty ended in 502 A.D. after twenty-three years when thirty-eight year old general Xiao Yan seized power.  But his Liang dynasty did not last very long either: only fifty-five years.  The succeeding Chen dynasty was also brief: thirty-two years.  

Unwittingly providing future chroniclers with clues to assign approximate or even exact dates to historical events, Chinese emperors frequently gave auspicious or inspiring names to the phases of their reign.  For instance, also posthumously known as Emperor Wu, Xiao Yan announced at the commencement of his reign the “Tian-jian” (天監; Heavenly Supervision) era, which lasted seventeen years.  His second period was promulgated as the “Putong” (普通; Ordinary) era, which lasted seven years.  During his forty-seven year rule, the emperor had the satisfaction of seeing southern China through a period of relative stability and prosperity.  He was an enlightened Buddhist and a devoted Confucianist.  Emphasizing education, he established universities.  He was also a patron of the arts.  

Serving under him was a bureaucrat, Feng Rong (冯融), the hereditary Governor (or Regional Inspector; ci shi) of Luozhou.  According to both the official History of the Sui completed under Tang official Wei Zheng’s supervision in 636 A.D. and Li Yanshou’s mid-seventh century unofficial History of the Northern Dynasties, Feng Rong’s ancestor was a Northern Yan (409-439 A.D.) royalty.  Li’s work added that the ancestors were Miao people.  Because his was not a state-commissioned publication, Li’s accuracy was susceptible to dispute.  Many Chinese historians insist that the royal Fengs were ethnic Han, who had adopted Miao customs through their years of living with the northern Miao people.  I am following this discussion with intense interest.  Am I related to Feng Rong?  Am I also of Miao descent?

Feng Rong’s son was also an employee in the emperor’s service.  Born in 509 A.D. in Guangdong, Feng Bao (冯宝) was the Prefect or Grand Protector (太守; taishou) of Gaoliang County (west of modern Yinjiong in Guangdong Province).

Somewhere in Gaoliang (高凉; modern Gaozhou, Maoming City), in Lidong Village (俚洞村; now 雷垌村, Leidong Village), a young girl was studying martial arts and military strategies under an unnamed master, which explains her later bravery, charisma, and fortitude.  As a member of the leading clan, Miss Xian Ying (冼英) inherited some of the leadership responsibilities.  She led many battles, earning her people’s trust and obedience.  And she also taught the value of harmony and kindness to her kin and countrymen.  She was upright and frank.  She admonished her rich and powerful brother, the leader of one county, when he unnecessarily invaded neighboring counties.  Because of her impartiality, even people from as far as Nanhai and Danzhou counties in Hainan brought their disputes for mediation.  That was a charming story some Maoming mothers repeated to their children.

According to official history, because of her moral rectitude and discipline, more than a thousand households from Hainan pledged their allegiance to her rash but later reformed brother.  Lady Xian’s clan members had “for generations been leaders of the Nan Yue”, adjudicating over the lives of more than a hundred thousand non-Han families.  During her early years, the Chinese commandery of that region effectively controlled only about five thousand Han households.  If an average household had five members, the Xian leader was overseeing the affairs of half a million non-Han people while the Feng prefect was overseeing only twenty-five thousand Hans.

When the Luozhou governor heard about the remarkable achievements of the maiden in her twenties, he sought her marriage to his son.  Given the prevailing prejudice against non-Han people, that was a remarkable request: the Fengs were (if seventh-century Li Yanshou was wrong) ethnic Hans from northern China whereas Miss Xian was a Li from southern China.  Yet what is even more remarkable is that this accidental and seemingly insignificant prudential union would provide the opportunity to this young interracial couple and their offspring to contribute directly to the political and racial unification and unity of an expanding China, the China of today.  This episode is, or should be, enlightening not only to the Feng clan but also to Chinese throughout the world.

Although the prefect, Feng Bao discovered to his frustration that his orders were often ignored by the Li people living within his small domain.  But his marriage to the Li lass in 535 A.D. soon transformed the situation.  His rules were framed according to her counsel, which she strictly enforced, even among the non-Han communities.  With the efficiency of his administration lifted, peace returned to the southern region.  Facilitating the implementation of Chinese legal system in Nanyue, this interracial marriage strongly bonded the Han and non-Han, a bond that lasted through the centuries.  

In 549 A.D., Feng Bao was forty years old when his son Feng Pu (冯仆; traditional: 馮僕) was born.  His wife was thirty-seven (or twenty-nine).  

An old man of eighty-five, emperor Wu was trapped in his palace in Jiankang (modern Nanjing) by the troops of his general, who had started a rebellion the previous year.  Hou Jing was a former Eastern Wei general.  Other self-interested Liang generals failed to send the necessary military aid.  Although a good emperor, Wu’s leniency had permitted corruption to flourish among his officials.  When food supplies were depleted, he died, apparently from starvation.  His son (emperor Jianwen) was enthroned but under Hou Jing’s control.

The following year, Hou Jing conspired with Guangzhou Governor Xiao Bo and Gaozhou Governor Li Qianshi to enmesh Feng Bao into their wider stratagem.  They invited him to a purported conference, where he would be detained as hostage if he should turn uncooperative.  Unaware of their guile, Feng Bao was ready to attend.  But forewarned by his wily wife, he did not move.  As predicted, Governor Li led a rebellion in Gaozhou a few days later.  A well-known strategist was delegated to crush Feng Bao.

Following his wife’s advice, Feng Bao avoided a military engagement with General Du Shi, which would have resulted in heavy losses on both parties, but still leaving Governor Li the winner.  The brave lady scripted a risky ruse: she would lead a train of porters bearing both gifts to Du Shi and Feng Bao’s conciliatory message to negotiate peace terms, thereby luring Li into a false sense of security and a state of unreadiness for a surprise attack.  Feng Bao would have sleepless nights over the wisdom of the deception plan.  Anything could easily go wrong.

When he received news of the gifts, the governor was elated, believing that Feng Bao had capitulated.  Madam Xian and her retinue of a thousand carefully-chosen warriors, posing as gift-bearing servants, were given a rousing welcome in Gaozhou.  Once inside the city stronghold, they discarded their disguises and attacked the unsuspicious defenders with concealed weapons.  Although Li escaped, peace was restored in Gaozhou.  Lady Xian and her forces then rallied with a loyal general, Chen Baxian.  She was impressed with his capability, and reported it to her husband.  

Meanwhile in Jiankang in 551, Hou Jing ordered the regicide of emperor Jianwen.  The governor of Jing Province (modern western Hubei) bid his time to exact revenge for his brother’s death.  The following year, the prince defeated Hou Jing and declared himself as emperor.  For her loyalty, emperor Yuan showered middle-aged Lady Xian with honors.  During his brief reign of two years from winter 552 to winter 554, the country was however wrecked with internal wars.  

Around this time, Feng Bao became seriously ill, thus leaving his wife to act in his stead.  In 555, chaos broke out in Lingnan, except in the districts under Lady Xian’s control.  At the start of the year, emperor Yuan was captured and killed by the Western Wei army.  Taking advantage of the turmoil, Northern Qi installed his cousin (Xiao Yuanming) as the fourth Liang emperor.  However, a disaffected Chen Baxian captured Jiankang and forced Xiao’s abdication, thus paving the way for the enthronement of the late emperor’s son.  The destabilized Liang capital came under frequent attacks from the north but was saved by the capable general.

After several victories over enemies and rebels, the exasperated general finally staged a coup in 557, forcing emperor Jing to abdicate.  Thus, the Chen dynasty was founded.

Having witnessed General Chen’s military capability and also popularity among the people, Lady Xian was pragmatically persuaded to recognize his new dynasty.  Around this time, in 557 or 558, Feng Bao died.  To prevent a political vacuum, Lady Xian dispatched their nine-year old son to Nanjing to seek the emperor’s endorsement of her administration.  Chen (known posthumously too as Emperor Wu) appointed Feng Pu as Grand Protector of Yangchun (陽春郡守; Yangchun junshou) under her regency.    

In 559, emperor Wu died from an illness.  His nephew and successor Chen Qian died also from an illness in 566.  The latter’s son was deposed three years later by his paternal uncle Chen Xu.  

Emperor Xuan ruled for thirteen years.  During his second year (570), a Guangzhou magistrate Ouyang He summoned Feng Pu to Nanhai Commandery.  The twenty-one year old inexperienced Grand Protector was captured and coaxed to participate in a revolt.  The ensnared lad sent a messenger to inform his mother of his predicament.  Reiterating her loyalty to the Chen emperor, Lady Xian advised her son against rebellion.  Meanwhile, she advanced troops to the border.  Reinforced with the emperor’s forces, they captured and beheaded Ouyang.  

The emperor knighted her rescued son as Duke of Xindu (信都侯; Xindou Hou) and awarded him the honor “Leader of Court Gentleman Who Quelled the Yue” (平越中郎将; Ping Yue Zhonglang Jiang).  He was later made the governor of Shilong (石龙太守; Shilong taishou).  In addition, the emperor conferred upon Lady Xian the title “Grand Consort of Shilong” (石龙太夫人; Shilong taifuren), a four-horse carriage, a military band, a staff, and honor guard equivalent to a regional inspector.  She moved to Shilong Sheng (Stone Dragon City), an ancient town in Gaoliang District.

Emperor Xuan died in 582 and was succeeded by his incompetent son Chen Shubao (who was to destroy the Chen dynasty seven years later.)  During the latter’s Zhide (至德; Extremely Virtuous, 583-586 A.D.) period of rule, Feng Pu died.  Feng Pu was only a young man of thirty-four in 584 (or thirty-five in 585).  His “concubine”, also surnamed “Xian”, was presumably a member of his mother’s clan.  With her, he had three well-known sons: the eldest, Feng Hun; the second, Feng Xuan; and the third, Feng Ang.

Here is an interesting observation on ethnicity: if Feng Pu was half-Han and half-Li, then his children were one-quarter Han and three-quarter Li.  It was obviously this factor that led the later Tang imperial court to deem, with engrained traditional prejudice, the Feng children as “barbarians”.  This is intriguing.  If they should turn out to be my ancestors, then I am a “barbarian” too, with the genetic DNA of “barbarians”.  Am I a “barbarian” too?  Am I uncultured and refined?  Never did I realize that my journey to my ancestral Hainan would raise such provocative questions in me of my ethnic origin.

Over in Northern Zhou kingdom, prime minister Yang Jian’s daughter was the royal consort.  When the king died, the queen became regent to her stepson.  In 581, her father seized the throne to inaugurate the Sui dynasty.  By 587, emperor Wen (Wendi, his posthumous title) had united the warring kingdoms in the north.  His attention then turned to the south.

The following year, he consigned a formidable army of ninety generals and five hundred and eighty thousand soldiers to destroy the Chen dynasty.  The south trembled in fear.  The governors and generals nominated the elderly Lady Xian, now in her mid-seventies (or late sixties), to lead their army to the border and guard vital passes.  

Entrenched on the hilly buffers, the two opposing armies stared at each other, posing patiently for the gory showdown.  As Lady Xian’s army was well trained and disciplined, the northern general did not strike.  During the following year, however, the Sui army succeeded in capturing the southern capital and its emperor.

When the lady and her generals received instruction to surrender from the imprisoned ruler through his messenger who also conveyed as credential his rhinoceros-bone staff, which was her gift to him, they recognized the inevitable end of the dynasty which they had faithfully served for thirty-two years.  They wept.  

To save the southern counties from a bloodbath, Lady Xian pledged her loyalty to the Sui.  She sent her eldest grandson to welcome General Wei Guang.  The emperor honoured Lady Xian with the title “Commandery Mistress of Songkang” (宋康郡夫人; Songkang Jun furen), and Feng Hun with “Unequal in honor” (仪同三司; Yitong sansi).  Deposed emperor Chen was transported to Sui capital Chang’an, where he was treated kindly until his death in 604.

Increasingly heavier taxes imposed to finance building and reconstruction projects led Wang Zhongxuan in Panyu (present Guangzhou) to revolt against General Wei Guang in 590.  The tribal chief was soon joined by other generals.  Wei Guang moved his army from Guangzhou to Hengling Pass, where he was subsequently besieged.  Lady Xian charged her second grandson Feng Xuan to rescue the ambushed troops.  Possibly in his early twenties and hence politically inastute, the young commander restrained his army from taking action against his friend General Chen Fozhi, who was one of the rebel leaders.  

His inaction provoked the fury of his grandmother when she was notified.  Authorizing agents to imprison him, the stern lady instructed her third grandson to assume command.  Born around 570, Feng Ang (冯盎) fought the rebels and killed Chen Fozhi.  With General Lu Yuan, he then attacked Wang Zhongxuan’s army.

Donning military attire, Lady Xian in her seventies also entered the fray and killed Wang.  Fronting her cavalry, she escorted the imperial emissary Pei Ju on a tour of all the counties under her control.  Wherever she went, the people pledged their loyalty to the new Sui emperor.

Lady Xian was knighted as “Qiaoguo Furen” (谯国夫人; “Consort of State Qiao” according to Sherry J. Mou’s translation, or “Lady Defender of the Country” according to Geoff Wade’s translation).  Showered with jewelries and fine clothing by the empress, she was given the authority to run the administration of six districts in the south.  Emperor Wen pardoned her second grandson and made him Governor of Luozhou.  He also appointed her third grandson as Prefect of Gaozhou.  Finally, the emperor bestowed upon her late husband the posthumous titles “Qiaoguo Gong” (谯国公; “Duke of State Qiao” or “Duke Defender of the Country”) and “Commander-in-Chief of Guangzhou” (广州总管; Guangzhou zongguan).

Although accurate, Mou’s translation of the honorific titles leaves out emperor Wen’s subtle message; for gifts in Chinese tradition often convey an implied wish or salutation as well.  For example, a donor’s painting of five bats (蝠; fu) expresses his blessing of the five “good fortunes” (福; fu) - health, wealth, long life, love of virtue, and good death - upon the recipient.  Similarly, “Qiao” (谯) is homophonic of “qiao” (瞧; look).  “Looking after the country” is the allusion illuminated by Wade.  Lady Xian’s protection of a united China under the Sui emperors even led Premier Zhou Enlai to hail her as “the first female heroine in China’s history”.

Ill-treated Guangzhou natives rose in revolt against their corrupt governor the following year.  Disregarding Lady Xian’s encouragement on good governance, he imposed martial law and executed some of the native leaders, fueling the unrest.  As a result, emperor Wen commissioned Lady Xian to investigate and resolve the natives’ grievances.  She impeached the corrupt governor and peace returned.  She was rewarded.

In 593, the emperor awarded her the Fief of Linzhen (臨振縣; Linzhen County, now Sanya) and its one thousand five hundred households.  Feng Pu was conferred the posthumous awards of “Area Commander-in-Chief of Yazhou (崖州總 管; Yazhou zongguan)” and “Duke of Pingyuan” (平原郡公; Pingyuan jun gong).  

The formidable grand warrior passed away at the ripe old age of eighty-nine (or eighty-one) in 601.  Given a state funeral, she was buried in Dianbai District.  Emperor Wen awarded her the posthumous honor “Mistress of Sincerity and Respect” (诚敬夫人; Chengjing Furen).  Her bravery and virtuous life won her widespread respect.  By the tenth century, many temples sprout out in southern Guangdong and Hainan Island to her memory, the Lingnan Sacred Mother (岭南圣母; Lingnan Sheng Mu).

Today, more than a hundred Xian Furen temples are scattered throughout Guangdong and Hainan.  There is even one at the corner of Jalan Kepong and Jalan Jinjang Aman 4 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  He Xi, a professor of History from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has pinpointed the locations of fifty temples in Hainan.  In Guangdong, the Gaozhou Xitai (洗太夫人; Xi tai furen) Temple, built in 1535, houses numerous ancient statues, sculptures, and stone inscriptions.  Prior to the 1949 written language reform in China, the character 洗 was pronounced as “Xian”.

 “Since I was born in Hainan, do you think I could be a descendant of Lady Xian and Feng Bao?”  Meekly, I ask Du Rui Dao (杜瑞道), the secretary of Xian Furen Memorial Temple in Xinpo, that far-fetched question.

 
“Of course, Feng Ang and his children came to Hainan.  You are their descendant.”

“Is that so?”  I replied incredulously.  The gentleman has not even studied my genealogical history.  How can he be so sure?

Interestingly, if Mrs Feng the warrior-goddess is my ancestor, am I divine too?  With that egocentric thought flashing through my mind, I generously purchase nine copies of a pictorial history written by Feng Suo Hai and illustrated by Feng He Xiao on her life and times.  Are these two Fengs my distant relatives too?

 Hitching a ride with us on our way back to town, Du cheerfully tells me that we are fated to meet.  His positive comment strengthens my faint hope and optimism of successfully tracing my lineage.  Cai Hong asks a question.

He is a geomancer, providing consultancy for clients in Haikou.  Aged sixty, he is married with three children.  His arms are broad and muscular, typical of a gongfu practitioner.  I enquire if he has some form of martial arts training.  Yes, he replies.  He has practised wushu since his childhood.  He alights along the way.  The lady operator says that she has heard of him.  He has made a name for himself here in the capital.  Cai Hong drops off along Haifu Road, leaving the lady to bring us to the hotel.

Wugong Temple, celebrating famous exiles

Three hundred metres from our hotel is Wuzhishan Road.  There, we board a No. 41 bus, which brings us along Haifu Road to Wugong Temple in Qiongshan district.  Occupying sixty-seven thousand square metres of land, this temple-cum-park is located three hundred metres after Haikou East Station, and five kilometres southeast from Haikou city centre.  We drop off at the bus stop.  But the long dull-red concrete wall offers no sign to indicate the direction to its entrance.  Should we turn left?  Or right?  We decide on left.
 
Paved with reddish-brown bricks, the walkway is broad and shaded under the overhanging branches of fig trees.  Only a handful of people stroll by.  The adjacent lane for bicycles, motorcycles, and trishaws is not crowded.  A short distance later, we enter into the lobby of a small hotel.  The young girl sweetly tells us to reverse our direction.  Unhassled, I stand momentarily along the walkway to admire the majestic banyans, their graceful aerial roots gently swaying at the touch of the light passing breeze.  

Before the entrance to the enclosed Wugong park is Wugong Vanilla Goose Restaurant.  What is “vanilla goose”?  We have no time to find out.

At the small, nondescript entrance office, we pay the admission fee of 20 RMB ($4).  Then we stride further in and hand our tickets to the lady in a small counter under the leafy branches of some trees.  Tied to two tree trunks on either side of the narrow lane is a red cloth banner, indirectly signalling the direction.

Continuing two hundred metres, we reach an old red building on our left.  We have a choice of entering via its flight of stairs, or turning right and trodding across the pathway between two ponds towards an impressive modern building.  Thinking that the latter houses the famous Wugong Temple, I opt for it.

Gleefully, we stand between the two man-made ponds, admiring the quaint artificial islet in one pond and a connecting concrete arched bridge in traditional Chinese design on our right.  Arched bridges are typical features in Chinese towns and villages, which are often built near their water supply.  On the islet is a solitary man practicing his taiji sword routine.  The lotus flowers in this pond are flourishing and blooming but not those in the pond on our left.  

Across the narrow Meishe River is a flat paved zigzag bridge, which is eccentric but charming.  The river is shallow, its yellow mud exposed at some spots by the recent seasonal drought.  Dredging work is continuing on the soil between the modern building and the blocks of flats to the left.  Huge precast concrete tubes, temporarily strewn on the river bed, will later be connected to form a drainage tunnel in the excavated site.  The murky water is still.  No fish surfaces; no bird is in sight or flight.  That is a disappointment.  Perhaps they will return when the river is flowing with aquatic life after the extant development.

We could stay for hours just to admire the exotic features of the bridges and ponds.  But our aim is to inspect the interior of the famous temple.

Two black panels flank the entrance to the new building, which turns out to be Haikou Museum.  Each panel consists of five black marble slaps on which are chiselled five famous notables associated with the island.  The portraits include the five court officials exiled to Hainan.  We enter and wander around the rooms for an hour.  Photographs in one room reveal the historic buildings as well as future projects in Haikou.  Missing, however, from the museum are the usual Chinese dynastic ceramics and curios.  But the museum is still in the early juncture of development.  We exit.

Secreted behind the red two-metre high wooden screen at the entrance of the “red building” is the compound of the “temple”.  This “red building” is actually not a building, but a wall enclosing the compound.  Initially, the screen obstructs our vision of the several buildings that occupy the compound.  Only when we have stepped behind it do we grasp the extent of the compact 0.67-acre (or 2,800 square-metre) compound.

In front of us is Sugong Temple.  On our left is a small archway in the shape of a moon.  It is the gate to the “First Building”.  On our right is also a similar moon gate to Fubo Temple.  A quick walk through all the moon gates shows that the whole compound is divided into four courtyards.  These courtyards are separated by walls with narrow, traditional Chinese moon gates for visitors’ passage.

In each courtyard is a major building.  From left to right, they are:  Five Officials’ Temple (五公祠; Wugong Ci), Su Officials’ Temple (苏公祠; Sugong Ci), and Two “Wave-Suppressing” Generals’ Temple (两伏波祠; Liang Fubo Ci), and “Cleaning-Heart” Porch or Pavilion (洗心轩; Xixin Xuan).  In the extreme left courtyard are also three smaller buildings: Five Officials’ Teaching Room (五公精舍; Wugong Jingshe), “Studying Gardening” Hall (学圃堂; Xuepu Tang), and “Observing Crops” Hall (观稼堂; Guanjia Tang).  All of these memorial “temples” and study halls of various sizes are constructed - in a sense - in a row.

Our swift survey also shows that their walls, doors, window panels, and structural pillars are painted in red, an auspicious colour in Chinese culture.  Even the altar cloth is red.  Although the buildings are enclosed within a small compound, their artistic and symmetrical arrangement and paved walkways under the shady branches of healthy green trees offers a cosy haven, where a visitor may blissfully rest.

In this serene setting, the main, yet unobtrusive, building is the Five Officials’ Temple, where my wife and I begin our self-guided tour.  While she immediately occupies herself photographing the statues, plants, flowers, trees, and buildings - indeed, anything that catches her whims! - I stand in momentary silence directly in front of the entrance to that brilliant-red two-storey wooden building.  It is ten metres in height with a three-panel door entrance.  Then I glance around.

Two metres to my left is the life-size stone statue of a slim Zhao Ding standing on a whitish square granite pedestal that is higher than my waist.  He is facing me.  But his slender face looks slightly downwards and towards his left.  His right hand clutches the right helm of his upper gown while the back of his left hand rests on his left waist.  The same distance to my right is a similar statue of a well-built Li Gang.  His back is facing me.  I drift closer.  He is wearing a strange official hat, and his broad face displays a scowl.  He is staring straight ahead.  His straight right arm with clenched fist is by his right side while his left hand with prominently bulging veins is holding the handle of his sword that is hidden behind his back.  He is poised to strike at his country’s foes.

 Slowly gazing upwards above the entrance of the building, I notice some similarities in the wooden framework of the balcony and the entrance: their three unshut doors, their overhead plaques, and the ventilation windows with identical patterns behind the plaques.  If not for its heraldic colour, the golden chiselled frame enclosing the Chinese characters 五公祠 (Wugong Ci) on the black plaque above the ground entrance, and a similar plaque with traditional characters 海南第一樓 (Hainan Di Yi Lou) above the balcony entrance, this temple appears to be the villa of a wealthy merchant.    

As I cautiously tread up the steep and narrow stairs to the first floor, I ruminate over the phrase “The Number One Building in Hainan”.  What does that mean?  How can it be the “Number One” building in Hainan when it is surrounded by towering office blocks?  Like the hall below, the hall on this floor is also spacious, being devoid of furniture.  Both have the combined floor space of about five hundred and sixty square metres.  I pause, and extract my pocket dictionary from my backpack.  “Di yi” can also mean “first”.  Is this the “first” building in Hainan?  Is this the “first” surviving ancient building in Hainan?

Constructed during Ming emperor Wanli’s reign (1572-1620) and rebuilt in 1889, the Wugong Temple commemorates five of the notable officials who were banished to Hainan during the Tang and Song dynasties, some of whom later died in Hainan.  Besides Li Gang and Zhao Ding, the other three were Li Deyu, Li Guang, and Hu Quan.  They were too brave, or too foolhardy, to offer constructive criticisms, which were misconstrued as obstructive or treasonous by their recipients.  Although ministers had been banished or exiled to various parts of China, those crossing the forbidding Qiongzhou Strait did so in great disgrace and shame.  And trepidation.  To all, they were exiled to the very edge of civilization, to a land of suffering, to a life of uncertainty in an island predominated by hordes of unpredictable barbarians.

Suffered they did.  Up until the twelfth century, Hainan Island was so desolate that an exile here was a prospect scaring the wits out of civil servants and political offenders.  A son-in-law of Du Huangshang, who was prime minister under tenth and eleventh Tang emperors Shunzong and Xianzong, Wei Zhiyi (Wade-Giles: Wei Chih-i, 765-807 A.D.) was the first recorded sufferer from the psychological disorder of map phobia.  He had such an anxiety of maps that he instinctively shut his eyes whenever a map of the South was brought before him.  He eventually became prime minister.  Given an official quarter, he was so terrified that he could not bring himself to look at the map on its wall.  When he finally worked his courage to unshut his eye, a map of Yazhou (崖州; Wade-Giles: Yai-chou) confronted him.

Established by the Liang dynasty, Cliff Prefecture was situated in northeastern Hainan, in the vicinity of modern Haikou City.  In 972, it was merged with neighbouring Qiongzhou Prefecture (琼州; Wade-Giles: Ch’iung-chou) to its west, and its name “Yazhou” was transferred to the southern prefecture of Zhenzhou (振州; Wade-Giles: Chen-chou, roughly modern Sanya).  In 1073, southern Yazhou was renamed “Zhuya” (珠崖; Wade-Giles: Chu-yai).  Ironically, northern Yazhou was the place of banishment for the ex-prime minister after his failed attempt in 805 to wrestle control of the Tang administration.  He died in that forsaken land.

Some two decades earlier, Yang Yan (Wade-Giles: Yang Yen, 727-781) was also exiled to northern Yazhou, where he was forced to commit suicide.

He was almost executed on a previous occasion.  In 777, his mentor, chancellor Yuan Zai, was executed for corruption by eighth Tang emperor Daizong.  Yang was fortunate, being only demoted and banished to a remote region in Hunan.  When the emperor died two years later, he was recalled to become a minister under emperor Dezong.

An excellent calligrapher, Yang Yan is noted in Chinese economic history for introducing the “Double Tax” system to solve the economic mess following General An Lushan’s 755 rebellion against sixth Tang emperor Xuanzong, who is better known in history for his romance with concubine Yang Guifei.

Luoyang and Chang’an, the two Tang co-capitals in northern China, were lying in ruins from the resulting wars.  The Silk Route trade was disrupted.  At its height during the seventh century, Chang’an had a population of more than a million people.  They fled.  Surrounding fields were uncultivated.  An Lushan nearly succeeded in his aspiration to rule the empire when he drove the emperor from the co-capitals.  But he and his son were later assassinated.  The resurrected Tang dynasty took ten years to bring the other rebels to heel.

Yang Yan lived through those harrowing times.  The equitable equal-field tax system, introduced by earlier Tang rulers, was no longer functional because the government had lost large tracts of land through grants and privatization of fields, and exploitative landowners had also unscrupulously seized small owners’ farms to increase their holdings.  Yang’s system imposed a heavier tax on property value (which would disadvantage these large landowners and businesses) and a biannual tax collection (in spring and autumn, which will spare struggling peasants from monthly or even fortnightly tax payments demanded by greedy low-ranking bureaucrats).  His mistake, however, was to antagonize Dezong.

A century later, General Li Hu was exiled to Hainan because of a military failure.  Foolishly seeking fame, the Protector of Annam left his province to recover Bozhou in Guizhou in 860.  Bo Prefecture was conquered a year earlier by the Nanzhao kingdom from Yunnan.  During the general’s absence, Southern Zhao soldiers, with the aid of natives suffering under Annam leaders’ oppression, seized the Annamese capital Jiaozhou (modern Hanoi).

In response, the Tang emperor diverted troops from adjacent regions.  Together, General Li successfully re-captured Annam.  He was not rewarded for his later success; instead, he was punished for his earlier mistake.  Not surprisingly, he and the previous two Tang officials were not commemorated in Wugong Temple.

Another Tang official was.  Li Deyu was prime minister during the ninth century.  He was and still is famous for his four-line Jue Ju (curtailed) poem, which describes Hainan Island as the "gate of hell".  

一去一万里，   Yi qu yi wan li，
千之千不还。   qian zhi qian bu huan。
崖州在何处，   Yazhou zai he chu，
生度鬼门关！   sheng du gui men guan!

My crude translation tells me: “One goes a thousand miles; thousands upon thousands do not return.  Whereabout is Yazhou?  Born from the gate of hell.”

 
I am perplexed.  Hainan was “the gate of hell”?  Was Hainan as hot as hell?  And were the victims tortured with every instrument conceivable?  My susceptible imprint of hell was formed during a primary school excursion to Haw Par Villa in Singapore.  Confined to a small knoll in the southwestern part of the island, this tourist attraction boasts captivating and colourful dioramic statuettes, strategically embedded in nooks and corners for maximum impact.

Strapped on slightly-raised platform, liars had their tongues snipped while their bodies agonisingly separated into halves with a huge saw manually operated by two sadists.  Seductive prostitutes had their breasts cleaved off with sharp clippers.  Boiled in huge pots of oil, some vicious men were screaming.  In Biblical stories, hell is a place of eternal fire and brimstone, where the inhabitants are pleading for cold water to quench their thirst and cool their burning bodies.

Did all these vex the political exiles in Hainan?  Was the angst or trauma from living among uncouth and uncultured “barbarians” of the South Sea so severe for the officials accustomed to power, prestige, and luxurious lifestyle?  Was the place so isolated and forbidding that it was a hell for them?  Yes, the costumes and customs of natives were strange.  Yes, the dangers on the island during the Tang or Song era were real.  In addition to snakes like boas and pythons, wild animals such as aggressive boars and Clouded Leopards freely roamed the lush virgin primeval rainforests that shadowed the tropical island.

Arriving from the revitalising temperate climate of the northern capital, the disgraced ex-officials were lashed by seasonal hot, humid typhoons while swamp mosquitoes kept them alert in the day and awake at night.  Tropical diseases took a heavy toll.  Just across the strait in Guangdong Province, Huang Chao lost between thirty and forty percent of his troops to malaria after capturing Guangzhou in 879 during a rebellion against the Tang emperor.  The rebel leader was killed by his nephew five years later.  Needless to say, in Hainan, doctors and drugs were rare.  No extended families or friends were there to answer pleas for assistance.  The social isolation was total.  

Conditioned to wheat noodles and buns, the exiles’ palates required adjustment to the bland taste of unpolished rice.  Walking tracks were few; they became muddy after a heavy downpour.  Buildings were patchworks of irregular branches, twigs, and coconut fronds.  The jungle was impenetrable, and its noises unfamiliar.  It was fear that frightened them.  Fear of the unknown.  Howling though the shadowy dancing bamboo bushes, the violent wind sounded ghostly, thus aggravating the depression of their superstitious minds.

I have browsed through a history text on the Tang dynasty to gain an understanding of the context and severity of the banishment penalty.  General Li Yuan seized the throne to become the first Tang emperor (Emperor Gaozu, 618-626) after Yangdi’s assassination in 618.  Emperor Yangdi had indirectly weakened the thirty-seven year Sui dynasty through his construction of the two-thousand kilometre Grand Canal, reconstruction of the Great Wall, and calamitous military battles against a Korean kingdom.  The heavy taxes and extensive conscripted labour imposed upon the people for these projects ignited widespread revolts and national upheaval.  A Sui census in 609 showed 8,907,536 families or 46,019,956 people residing in China.  With the subsequent peace, the population boomed.  A Tang census in 754 showed 9,069,154 families or 52,880,488 people.

Over in Hainan Island, the reverse occurred.  At the start of the Sui dynasty in 581, ten townships had been established with a taxable population of nineteen thousand five hundred households.  But, by the eighth century, only eleven thousand five hundred and forty-four taxable families were left.  Many factors contributed to the fall in the Han Chinese population.  One was the inland natives’ deadly raids on the coastal homes during the seventh and eighth century, which coincided with the unrests that broke out in Lingnan (modern Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam).  Another was the Lao’s invasion of Hainan in 667.  

Local and foreign pirates were a scourge too.  A very large village of “Po-sse” (Persians) was present in Hainan in 748.  A decade later, Arab and Persian pirates from their southern base in Hainan plundered Guangzhou, the trading port on the mainland.  To deal with the menace, a naval patrol was formed, quartered in Guangzhou, which had, during the mid-eighth century, a population of about two hundred thousand, among whom were many foreigners “with dusky faces” such as Malays, Indians, and possibly Iranians.  Plagued by pirate attacks, many traders from Guangzhou flocked to Vietnam.  When peace was restored during the beginning of the ninth century, they trickled back.  

A military expedition at the end of the eighth century pacified Hainan Island for the following six decades.  During periods of peace, Chinese merchants brought axes, hatchets, tools, salt, and silk to Hainan to barter for the natives’ cotton and sandalwood incense.  Braving the hazards, some of these intrepid Chinese became millionaires.  In 858, Nanzhao, founded two centuries earlier in Yunnan, captured northern Vietnam and was set to invade Guangxi and Guangdong.  As part of the counter-attack strategy, the Tang army moved into Hainan and drove the aborigines into the central highland.  After the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, Nam-Viet was partitioned among five warlords five years later.  But by 917, warlord Liu Yen had vanquished the others and created an independent kingdom of Great Viet, which was renamed the following year as “Han”.  Hainan came under the control of Han, based in Guangzhou.

Constant turmoils in the southern regions of China over the last three centuries of the first millennium had thus adversely affected the lives of Hainan residents.  As the Han population was small, safety in number was absent.  Life was precarious.  With a sparse Han population in danger of attacks from pirates and suspicious natives, Hainan was a dreadful place, a hell, for the former Tang prime minister, who had alternating exhilarations and dismays.

His statue stands before me just outside the Number One Building’s right door and in front of Guanjia Hall.  Wearing his official gown, belt, and hat, the slender gentleman has a pensive face with eyes that longingly search the horizon, towards his family home.  

Li Deyu (李德裕) was born in 787 during the reign of ninth Tang emperor Dezong and died in January 850, thus living and serving during the second half of the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.).  His pedigree was impressive.  His grandfather Li Qiyun was an important official during the reign of emperor Daizong while his father Li Jifu, after a span of exile during emperor Dezong’s reign, became a chancellor to Dezong’s grandson, emperor Xianzong.

When his father was chancellor, Li Deyu served under several regional governors.  During the 816-819 period he was the secretary to Zhang Hongjing, the ex-chancellor and new military governor of Hedong Circuit (headquartered in Shanxi).  Returning to Chang’an, Li became an imperial censor.  The following year the emperor died and was succeeded by his son.

Under twelfth Tang emperor Muzong, Li Deyu won further promotions.  For instance, he was an imperial scholar, an official in the Ministry of Public Works, and then supervisor in the Ministry of Civil Service.  In 821, he was, however, embroiled in a power struggle against Yuan Zhen’s colleague, Li Zongmin.  It started from a case of favouritism and nepotism.

Supervising the imperial examinations, Li Zongmin's subordinate Yang Rushi and Deputy Minister of Rites Qian Hui passed the following people: Li Zongmin’s son-in-law, Yang’s brother, Examination Bureau official Zheng Tan’s brother, and military governor (and former chancellor) Pei Du’s son.  A complaint against the two supervising officials was lodged by imperial scholar Li Shen and military governor Duan Wenchang (who was a former chancellor).  After listening to the opinions of other imperial scholars, one of whom was Li Deyu, the emperor dismissed the undeserving candidates and demoted Li Zongmin, Yang, and Qian.

In 823, Niu Sengru, a critic of Li Deyu’s father, was appointed as chancellor.  As a contender for the post, Li was disappointed.  He was deployed as governor of Zhexi Circuit, his headquarter in Jiangsu.  There he restored the impoverished treasury and reformed the social customs.  In 825, he courageously addressed a memorial (a memorandum) to newly-enthroned Jingzong, urging him to reform his lust for graft and sex.  Although the emperor thanked him, Li was fortunate to escape execution.  The emperor was assassinated in 827.  

Two years later, emperor Wenzong made him Deputy Minister of Defense.  But his rise to power was obstructed when Li Zongmin became chancellor.  Vindictive, the latter transferred the junior minister out of Chang’an to be military governor of Yicheng Circuit (headquartered in Henan).  In 830, Niu Sengru, the new chancellor, moved Li Deyu even further: to Xichuan (in modern Sichuan).  As military governor, the latter strengthened its defense against the Nanzhao attacks.

Chancellor Niu’s downfall was caused by his recommendation rejecting Xidamou’s unilateral offer in 831 to surrender Wei Prefecture, which was captured from the Tang several years earlier by Tufan (now Tibet).  When the Tibetan governor made his offer to Li Deyu, the Xichuan military governor endorsed it in his report to the emperor, believing Weizhou could be put to future use in the fight against invading frontier tribes.  Upon the emperor’s rejection, Xidamou and his soldiers were repatriated to their Tufan ruler, who promptly executed them for their treason.  The emperor regretted his action, leading to the resignation of the chancellor, who was posted to be the military governor of Huainan Circuit in Jiangsu.

Li Deyu was promoted as Minister of Defense in Chang’an.  In 833, Li became chancellor while Li Zongmin became military governor of Shannan West Circuit.

But by late 834, Li Deyu fell out of favour for opposing the appointments of some of the emperor’s candidates.  He was again sent out of the capital.

However, the fifty-three year old gentleman was fortunate to be recalled in 840 by emperor Wenzong’s twenty-five year old brother.  Leading the Li Faction against the Niu Faction, Li Deyu’s power and influence peaked under emperor Wuzong, who reigned from February 840 to April 846.  As Left Vice-Director of the Department of State Affairs, which was his official title, the chancellor had precedence over the Right Vice-Director.  The directorship was left vacant from the time Li Shimin, who had held the post under his father’s reign, ascended as the second Tang emperor in 626.

Li Deyu’s leadership came at a crucial time, seven months before the Uighur refugee crisis.  Inhabiting the Mongolian steppe north of China, the Uighurs had exerted considerable influence in the Tang kingdom ever since their assistance to emperor Xuanzong in suppressing An Lushan’s rebellion from 755 to 762.  Three of their leaders had even received royal princesses as wives.  Their people grew wealthy through trade, exchanging horses for silk.  By the end of the eighth century, they loomed over many tribes around them, including the Kirghiz.  But the stability of the Uighur khanate unravelled in 820 when its qaghan (“khan”; sovereign leader) attacked the Kighiz leader, who had provocatively styled himself a “qaghan”.  Within the Uighur khanate, succession contest also added to the fire.  By 840 the Uighurs suffered a crisis, a conquest by the Kirghiz.  

Uighur refugees fled in all directions.  The first group appeared in autumn (September 840) near Tiande (about one hundred and fifty kilometres west of modern Baotou), the northern garrison city protected by about a thousand troops.  Tang border military commanders were confused and uncertain because little news on the evolving situation filtered through the rugged terrain.  Needless to say, information did not travel very fast in those days.  Some commanders wanted to kill the refugees, thinking that they were an invading force.  Some simply wanted to kill them; they were “barbarians”.

Li Deyu’s governorship of Xichuan provided him with insights into plausible options.  Initially, he wrote letters urging them to return and retake their homeland.  Slow mails did not alleviate but merely delayed the tension until the following year.  During the second half of 841, the refugees were hungry and desperate.  To prevent a possible attack on the Tiande garrison for its stockpile, the chief minister petitioned the emperor for the gift of thirty thousand “shi” (about 2, 394 U.S. tons) of food, citing past good relations.  Despite objections from other officials, the emperor agreed with Li’s proposal but reduced the quantity to twenty thousand “shi” (about 1,600 U.S. tons).  Meanwhile, Li ordered the fortification of the border cities as a precaution.

At the start of 842, a second group of refugees appeared near the border, their leader appealing for the temporary loan of a “city” in the Zhenwu Circuit (around the confluence of Gold River and Yellow River) for shelter.  Li politely rejected, listing the reasons.  Not only was it unprecedented in Chinese history, it was also demeaning to the Uighurs, said Li.  Downcast, the new qaghan subsequently led his group of about a hundred thousand far away from the border.  The Taihe Princess, who was the widow of a deceased qaghan and also the paternal aunt of the Tang emperor, was retained as hostage by them.  

A conflict arose among the leaders of the first group.  Apparently, two leaders were planning an attack against the Tang border.  They were betrayed and killed by Ormizt Tigin, who revealed the plan to the Tiande military governor.  Ormizt was rewarded.  For their submission to the Tiande governor in June 842, he and his group of more than two thousand six hundred high officials, grand chieftains, and cavalry officers were accorded official titles and Chinese names, reflecting their admission into cosmopolitan Tang society.  Ormizt (now Li Sizhong) was made Grand General of the Left Imperial Insignia Guard and Prince of the Commandery of Huaihua (“Cherishing Transformation”).  These Uighurs were resettled in the border region of Taiyuan.   

By refusing to return the Taihe Princess, the Uighur qaghan was rejecting Tang authority, which put him on a war footing with the Tang.  His forays on some outlying tribes to obtain food and livestock impaired his cause.  After some fruitless negotiations for her return and for their departure from Tang borders, Li Deyu memorialised for an attack against the qaghan.  The emperor’s agreement was given in October 842.   Preparations proceeded.  Horses were to be purchased from the non-Chinese living near the frontier; troops were to be repositioned to buttress the weaker garrisons.  Permission was given to the Hedong Circuit military governor to act according to the situation.

Prudently, the governor dispatched a courageous spy, a man who was spared the death penalty for killing another in a fight, into the qaghan’s camp.  Claiming that an attack from Zhenwu was imminent, the agent successfully convinced the qaghan to move his camp east to Hedong.  The false alarm had also induced some Uighurs to leave the group, thus weakening the leader.

Under the shroud of darkness on a February night in 843, the Tang troops surrounded the camp and launched a victorious attack, rescuing the Taihe Princess.  Wounded, the qaghan escaped with hundreds of followers.  Living far from the Tang border, his poorly-equipped group, reduced to robbing other tribes for food, was no longer a threat.  He was murdered in 846 by either his own minister or an assassin hired by a high-ranking Uighur who was once under Ormizt’s employment.

In his Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire, Michael R. Drompp wrote: “The threat to China’s northern frontier had been dispelled, thanks to the collaboration of three forces: the border generals and their troops, Ormizt and other submitted Uighurs, and the brilliant mind of Li Deyu.”

A new crisis emerged.  In May 843, Governor Liu Conjian of Zhaoyi Province died after an illness, and his family’s control of the province was seized by his nephew Liu Zhen.   Zhaoyi enjoyed some degree of independence when military governorship was permitted to be transferred from father to son after the death of Liu Wu in 825.  While most court officials recommended a temporary recognition of Liu Zhen’s claim, Li Deyu urged the emperor to attack the usurper.  During the campaign, Liu Zhen was murdered by his own followers in 844.  As a result, the Tang emperor regained direct control of the territory.  Li Deyu was rewarded with the title of defender-in-chief (太尉; taiwei) and enfeoffed as Duke of Wei (Weiguo Gong).

Woefully for Li Deyu, the thirty-one year old emperor died in April 846 after a long span of illness, unintentionally poisoned by the concoctions of Daoist doctors in his court.  He was succeeded by his uncle.  Uneasy and jealous of Li’s influence, emperor Xuanzong (personal name: Li Yi, later Li Chen) progressively demoted him, firstly assigning him to Hubei and Luoyang, then to Chaozhou on the eastern Guangdong coast in 847, and finally to northern Hainan on 8 October 848.

At Yazhou, the honest and frank Census Officer built a small hut.  Most of the Hainan inhabitants, he observed, reared chickens.  

“Time and again they fly into my office building.  Now I’m going to be just an old man praying to chickens!”  

Li Deyu died on 26 January 850, aged sixty-three, less than two years into his Hainan exile.  In 852, his son Li Ye brought his coffin from Hainan to Luoyang for re-burial.  Li Deyu’s honours were posthumously restored a decade later by the next emperor.

Michael Drompp remarked: “…his death no doubt was hastened by his exile to the unhealthy climate of Hainan….”  

As I gaze at Li Deyu, my mind drifts back to the sombre words of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities ... vanity of vanities; all is vanity.  What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?”  

Li Deyu had intimations of life’s vicissitudes, basking in national accolade, power, and glory but ultimately suffering courtly displeasure and exile.  Famous among his contemporaries, his Pingquan Villa in Luoyang, constructed in 825, showcased a fabulous landscape of rare trees, plants, and also rocks with weird shapes and sizes.  These rocks had been specially transported from various regions of China.  His passion was not exceptional.  Living two centuries later, Su Dongpo too was an avid rock collector.  Despite his attachment to his beloved garden, Li Deyu’s wish to bequeath it to his descendants was thwarted.  When the Tang dynasty fell a century later, his collection was pilfered during the mayhem.

His hands tucked together behind his back, Li Deyu’s slim body, slender face with long moustache merging with wavy beard, and simplicity of his official gown and hat veil the richness of his history.  Few are aware of his great contribution to the Tang Empire and emperors.  It is fitting that his statue stands slightly apart from the statues of the four Song exiles, although closer to Li Gang.

Three hundred years after Li Deyu’s death saw the exile to Hainan of these four Song ministers: Li Guang (李光; 1078-1159), Li Gang (李纲; 1083-1140), Zhao Ding (趙鼎; 1085-1147), and Hu Quan (胡铨; 1102-1180).  They were extremely unfortunate.  They lived through the harrowing Jurchen invasion and capture of their Northern Song capital and territory in 1126.  As I stroll to survey the positions of their life-size statues, Li Guang and Hu Quan being stationed closer to Zhao Ding, my memory briefly recalls the inception of the resurrected dynasty they unflinchingly nursed.

The Song dynasty was founded in 960 when a military general successfully reunited the kingdoms emerging out of the disintegrated Tang.  Zhao Kuangyin was later known as emperor Taizu (reign: 960-976).  By 971, his forces had conquered the southern territories.  To their discovery, the Hainanese coastal regions were still sparsely populated.  Besides the indigenous tribes, only a hundred thousand Han Chinese lived on the island.

Although these regions were again subject to raids by inland natives during the eleventh century, overall in China, a century of relative peace had prevailed, permitting the expansion of rice cultivation and a burgeoning population.  A census in 1083 showed the presence of 17,211,713 families or about ninety million people (including foreigners), the number increasing to 20,882,258 families or more than a hundred million people in 1123.  When Hainan came under Guangxi provincial administration, more Han Chinese migrated to the island.  Conditions seemed to be improving.

Northern Song, however, began to crack in 1122 when the eighth Song emperor concluded an alliance treaty assisting the Jurchen tribe (in southern Manchuria) in rebellion against the Khitan Liao dynasty.  By doing so, Huizong (r. 1101-1125) had hoped to repossess the Sixteen Prefectures from the Khitans.  But having repulsed their Liao overlord, the nascent Jin (Gold) dynasty (1115-1234) turned against its weakened ally three years later.  In 1125, its armies were attacking Song territories in the north.  And by year end, they besieged Kaifeng, the capital.

Huizong abdicated in favour of his twenty-six year old son, the luckless last Northern Song emperor Qinzong (r. 1126-1127).  Huizong was a noted painter and calligrapher.  On the courtyard wall of the Liang Fubo Temple in Wugong Temple complex is a stone tablet reproducing his calligraphy. Incidentally, Huizong had sixty-five children, thirty-one of whom were sons, making him the emperor with the most children in China.

Poorly-organized and ill-equipped military defence at Kaifeng permitted the Jurchens to seize it in January 1127 and take as captives the retired and reigning emperors.  Accompanied by some three thousand imperial family members and court officials and their families, the former rulers remained imprisoned in the Jin capital for the rest of their lives.  (One official and his family later escaped under circumstances deemed by Chinese historians as suspicious.)  As the Jin swiftly established its empire over the northern half of the Song Empire, the remnant court fled to the south, initially to Yangzhou on Yangzi River.  

Huizong’s ninth son proclaimed himself as emperor.  Only nineteen years old, Zhao Gou was a tragic figure.  His only son died in a palace accident at the age of three, and his wife was also the Jurchens’ prisoner, their bargaining chip and grip over his future actions.  Morosely, he led a demoralised army of barely a few thousand soldiers.  The other regiments were scattered throughout the Song Empire under the control of their generals, some of whom later mutinied.  Yet the newly enthroned Gaozong (r. 1127-62) could count on, besides patriotic subjects, also loyal officials, who soon formed the cream of the southern Song dynasty.  Regrettably, four would be exiled to Hainan.

Of the four, Li Guang was the oldest; he was forty-eight years old when Kaifeng fell.  Li Gang was forty-three; Zhao Ding was forty-one; while Hu Quan was twenty-four.  But in the Northern Song bureaucracy during its final days, Li Gang was the most senior: he was Grand Secretary and Prefect of Kaifeng.  Hu Quan was the most junior: he was preparing for his impending imperial court examinations, which he passed the following year to qualify as an “advanced scholar” (进士; jinshi).  Zhao Ding was a minor official in the capital, with the professionalism as magistrate in his home province Shanxi.  A native from Zhejiang, Li Guang became a provincial official after graduating as a jinshi at the age of twenty-eight.  Even before the national disaster, he had rejected the notion of a peace treaty with the Jurchens.

Hailing from Wuxi (in modern Jiangsu), where his father and grandfather had settled, Li Gang passed his jinshi examinations in 1112 at the age of 29 after an unsuccessful attempt seven years earlier.  From his first official appointment in 1114 as a censor, he was later promoted to Vice-Director of the Bureau of Review and then as an Imperial Diarist.  In 1125, he was Vice-Minister of Imperial Sacrifices, when the Jurchens attacked the capital, the traumatic event leading him to submit a memorial for Huizong’s abdication.  Under Qinzong, he was Vice-Minister of War and, later, Assistant Director of the Right of State Affairs and concurrently Commander of the Imperial Brigade.  Being ordered to relieve Taiyuan, he fortunately evaded capture.  He joined emperor Gaozong in the south.

To these and other Song officials who had narrowly escaped, the Jurchens’ siege of 1126 and victory of 1127 was devastating.  Their brutal war misfortunes and loss of their northern homes were to shape their subsequent attitude towards their enemies.  Should they make peace with them?  If the Jurchens were unreliable allies, could they be trusted to honour any future peace treaty?

The Southern Song court was disunited.  Over the following fifteen years, the forces of Southern Song and Jin were engaged in frequent battles.  The Jin troops were attacking territories in the south while pockets of Song guerrilla fighters in the north were harassing their conquerors.

As the first chief councillor of the nascent Southern Song dynasty, Li Gang worked tirelessly for a short period of two and a half months to steel the shell-shocked court for ultimately a counterattack against their foes.  He was foremost among the officials advocating a war of resistance.  During the mid-1127, more than one hundred thousand Song soldiers in northern China were primed to resist the Jurchens.  He sought to strengthen the regions north of the Yellow River with military power or influence by reuniting displaced owners with their deserted homes.  

Dismally, his plan met with the strident opposition of wealthy families, whose financial “donations” were encouraged under his proposal.  Young emperor Gaozong was also in no mood for war.  Preying on his mind was the fact that his older half-brother in captivity would be restored to power after a royal rescue.  His four or five older siblings had a better claim to the crown.

Following the advice of the anti-war faction in court, Gaozong removed forty-four year old Li Gang in 1127 and banished him to Wan’an Prefecture (now Wanning City and Lingshui).

Stoically, the exile made his way across Qiongzhou Strait to Haikou and, upon receiving directions, he proceeded to Wan’an.  After a long voyage, the exile received unexpected news of his recall.  But he would no longer be as influential.

Arriving in southern China as a relatively unknown provincial official, Zhao Ding was recommended to the court by his friend Zhang Jun.  A jinshi at the age of twenty-one, his brilliance led to his meteoric promotion from policy adviser to censorial official and then general censor.  In 1129, daily news depressed the young emperor: the Jin army was growing stronger, penetrating further south.  They fled to Hangzhou (later called Lin’an), where the army mounted a mutiny, forcing Gaozong to abdicate.  He was fortunate; he was rescued and reinstated by his quick-witted chief councillor Zhu Shengfei, who delayed the mutineers from killing the emperor.  Reinforcements arrived in time.

In anticipation of further Jin attacks, Zhao Ding surveyed and arranged the escape route, via Hangzhou with about fifty ships, each ferrying sixty soldiers accompanied by two family members each.  His loyalty to the emperor was unstinting.  When the northern resistance movements were ruthlessly crushed by the advancing Jin, the emperor and his selected group of about three thousand were finally forced in January 1130 to make the naval escape, an unprecedented move in Chinese history.  Dogged by storms for three days, they successfully eluded pursuit by their enemy’s smaller ships.  Other officials and imperial family members were dispersed by land.  

Among the members of the emperor’s staff was treacherous Qin Hui.  Born in 1090 near modern Nanjing, the talented scholar married a granddaughter of a former chief councillor.  Riding on her family’s social standing, he rose to be instructor in the Imperial University in Kaifeng in 1123.  Three years later, the Jurchens attacked the capital.  Under captivity, he became secretary to emperor Qinzong.  Claiming a miraculous escape from his captors, Qin Hui and his family turned up in the southern capital in 1130.  Although many Southern Song officials suspected him as a Jurchen spy, chief councillor Fan Zongyin offered his endorsement and the pliable emperor made him Minister of Rites.

Meanwhile, safe from the tempestuous sea, the empress dowager and her overland party were, fortunately, only robbed, not killed, by their mutinous guards when they came under Jurchen attack in Jiangxi.  Qin Hui’s father-in-law, the prefect of the area, surrendered to the enemy.  Similarly, one of the three chief councillors, Du Chong, handed over Nanjing without resistance, astounding the imperial court.

On his return to Shaoxing, the emperor promoted Zhao Ding to deputy military commissioner.  But soon the official, who disregarded the imperial wish on the promotion of some officials, was transferred out as Governor of Suzhou, and then as Governor of Nanjing.  In both roles, he was also concurrently the Pacification Commissioner of the eastern Yangzi region.  In 1133, he was made Governor of Nanchang on Lake Poyang and Pacification Commissioner of Jiangxi.  In all districts under his care, he restored military stability and eliminated banditry.  

Twenty-three year old emperor Gaozong reigned but not ruled.  He set the general direction while his older ministers in general administration, military, and finance formulated the details and implemented them.  At the top of the bureaucracy were usually two or three chief councillors (or chief ministers) – one in control of general administration and the other in control of military.  Occasionally, there might be a sole chief councillor or a sole chief councillor with associate councillors.

During the first decade of Gaozong’s reign, the majority of chief councillors hovered approximately a year in their job because of the difficulty of forming and controlling an empire under constant Jin siege.  A battle debacle or a regiment’s defection often resulted in dismissal.  

Power and status is transient.  As we have seen earlier, Gaozong was even forced in 1129 to abdicate but was saved by a timely intervention.  In the aftermath of the 1130 chaos, Qin Hui’s promotion was rapid.  Within a year of his return, he had become chief councillor.  But in 1132, he was dismissed and given a sinecure post, apparently because of the emperor’s momentary displeasure over his capitulatory Jurchen policy.  

Known for his dedication, Zhao Ding was recalled in 1134 to act as an associate councillor.  When a fresh Jurchen attack came, he advised against another withdrawal, citing improved military readiness; for the Song defense had been steadily building a credible army and navy after suffering from several previous military blunders.  Soon, Zhao became the Chief Councillor of general administration.  He was working amicably again in 1135 with his friend Zhang Jun, who was the Chief Councillor of military, to improve the efficiency and welfare of the imperial court.  Zhao Ding had recommended his recall to the emperor after an earlier dismissal.

Over in the north, the death of the Jurchen emperor saw the instalment of Wanyan Hela (known as Wanyan Dan to the Chinese), who adopted a less aggressive posture against the Song.  Qin Hui, who had - prior to his escape - also served Wanyan Hela, was now Prefect of Wenchou.  

A major victory against the Jin at Outang led to a split between Zhao Ding and his friend.  While Zhao Ding had earlier advocated a retreat and consolidation of the defense, Zhang Jun had advised and staged a military battle.  The latter proved to be right.  But flushed with confidence after the victory, Zhang Jun pressed for a further attack.  Still preferring military consolidation, the gracious Zhao Ding did not wish to criticise or obstruct his friend’s strategy.  Instead, he magnanimously recommended the adoption of his colleague’s strategy to the emperor.  He also offered his resignation in 1136.  The emperor reluctantly released and transferred him out as Governor of nearby Shaoxing, with the proviso that he be available for recall.    

1137 marked a turning point in Southern Song history.  Qin Hui was summoned back on Zhang Jun’s recommendation, and was appointed also as Chief Councillor (or Commissioner of Military Affairs), an appointment which would have disastrous consequences for many of his critics.  Ironically, Zhang Jun was banished; for, in his eagerness to launch a counterattack on the Jurchens, he had replaced an effective general with an inept civil servant, thereby causing the defection of an army of more than thirty thousand soldiers to Liu Yu, an ally of the Jurchens.

Fifty-two year old Zhao Ding was recalled and appointed as Chief Councillor.  To no avail, Zhao Ding had pleaded with the emperor to retain his friend in some capacity in the capital.  During the year, the Song forces won some battles under the command of General Yue Fei.  The tide was turning against the Jin.

Formally reporting the fate of Huizong, who had died two years earlier, the Jin expressed their readiness for a peace pact under which the Song accept vassal status and payment of annual tributes in exchange for the ex-emperor’s body, his wife (emperor Gaozong’s mother), and the regions of Henan and Shanxi.  (Not broached in the proposal, Qinzong spent thirty-four years in solitary incarceration, dying in 1161.)

Zhao Ding permitted the Song envoy latitude in negotiating the return of prisoners and amount of annual tributes (250,000 taels of silver and similar amount worth of silk) to be paid.  But he insisted on two non-negotiable items: the emperor’s sovereign status and demarcation of the border (which was the old course of Yellow River).

By this time, the twenty-seven year old emperor was disposed again toward a peace treaty.  However many officials rejected the humiliating 1138 terms.  Instead of a direct rejection of his sovereign’s inclination, Zhao Ding, in deference, suggested a consultation with the generals, knowing full well of their disgust.  

Zhao Ding’s suggestion was not embraced.  Pandering to the emperor’s desire, capitulationist Qin Hui conspired and undermined Zhao Ding’s authority.  Under his instigation, the emperor sacked Zhao Ding and pushed him again to Shaoxing as governor.

Qin Hui became the sole chief councillor, an office he would then hold for almost eighteen years until his death in 1155.  He proceeded to dismiss the capable generals, who were eager to recoup their stolen homeland.  The peace was made with the Jurchens.  Soon Qin Hui transferred Zhao Ding to Fujian.

After Zhao Ding’s resignation, another outspoken opponent of appeasement became Qin Hui’s target.  Born in Luling in Jizhou (now Ji’an city, Jiangxi), Hu Quan (informal name: Feng Heng) was twenty-five when he was inducted into the Bureau of Military Affairs (枢密院; Shumiyuan) after his imperial examinations.  By 1135, he was its official editor for compiling and revising material.  He was a fervent protagonist of the pro-war camp.  

In a memorial to the emperor in 1138, the courageous thirty-six year old gentleman denounced the chief councillor and his apologists as traitors for propagating a treaty with their enemy.  He even called for their execution.  (I later notice this nugget of information on a plaque in Tianya Haijiao Scenic Park, Sanya: Hu Quan demanded the public execution of forty-eight year old Qin Hui, Sun Jin, and Wang Lun to encourage the people of the world!)

Ignoring the emperor’s rejection of his memorial, Hu Quan published and circulated it, resulting in his demotion to Fujian as a notary.  The printer was exiled too.  

In 1139, a Jurchen usurper successfully seized power, murdering his predecessor.  Renouncing the previous agreement, he re-invaded Henan and Shanxi.  With the Jurchens’ action vindicating Zhao Ding’s prediction of their untrustworthiness, the deeply embarrassed Qin Hui harassed him even further.  Zhao Ding was impeached for the alleged misdeamour of using hundreds of local guards to escort him to Fujian.  Meanwhile, Yue Fei’s defeat of the Jurchens enabled him to move into Hebei.  Because of the court’s fear of a total war, the general was ordered to retreat to Henan.  The resulting military stalemate later prompted another peace overture from the Jurchens.  

Tension between the pro-peace and pro-war officials resurfaced in 1140.  Qin Hui redirected his fury upon his opponents.  Zhao Ding was forced into retirement.  Yet even in retirement, he was placed under another nebulous charge and banished to Guangdong.  Military commanders zealous for battle were elevated to Court positions in order to deprive them of their command.  Their deputies were promoted to their stead, thus ensuring subservience to the Court’s wishes.  Qin Hui also commenced total control of the media, the Imperial Library, in an attempt to project a credible image of his legacy.  

Yue Fei, who publicly opposed the peace agreement, became a conspiratorial victim.  Recalled from the battlefront, he was arrested for treason, imprisoned, and finally murdered at the end of 1141 or early 1142.  (A century later, the Jin and Song empires would succumb to the marauding Mongols.)  Many other officials were similarly denounced as disloyal to the state and were banished, exiled, or killed.  Exile was harsher than banishment.  In exile, the victim came under the surveillance of the local magistrate.

Following Qin Hui’s ill advice, the emperor signed another unfavourable compact.  Under the Treaty of Shaoxing of 1142, Southern Song renounced all claims to its former territory (north of the Huai River) and also paid annual tribute (until 1164) to the Jin.

To consolidate his power, the nepotistic Qin Hui promoted his family members and maternal relatives.  In 1142, his brother was appointed as vice-director of the Imperial Library while his adopted son was initially appointed as an assistant and shortly thereafter its vice-director.  The following year, the son was then elevated as its director.  In 1144, Qin Hui imposed a ban on private records of contemporary events in an attempt to censor unfavourable commentaries on his actions.

When he persisted with his critical poems against peace with the Jurchens, Hu Quan was reassigned from Fujian to Guangdong in 1142.  Two officials, who penned sympathetic poems prior to his departure to Guangdong, were imprisoned or placed under house arrest.

For constantly advocating recovery of Northern Song territory, Zhao Ding was banished to Jiyang Military District (吉阳郡; Jiyang Jun, now Sanya) in September 1144.  He stayed with Fei Wenyi in Shuinan Village.  

Li Guang was also banished to Hainan in the same year as Zhao Ding.  Earlier, in 1138, the prolific writer with extensive provincial administration training was co-opted by Qin Hui as assistant councillor on the expectation that he would persuade the Southern Song elite and middle class to accept the peace deal.  But Li’s disposition was similar to Zhao Ding’s: to prepare for war while deceptively engaging in peace negotiations.

A severe critic of the peace proposals, he insisted that the Jins were unreliable partners.  He had been in opposition of the territory-for-peace policy even before 1126 and had, during the eleven-thirties, consistently recommended a strengthened defence along Yangzi River, the de facto border with the Jin.  He went so far as to acclaim Li Gang as “the subduer of barbarians of the four corners.”

Dismissed in 1139 (or 1140), he returned to his home in Shaoxing with a sinecure post.  In 1141, the sixty-four year old official was accused of organizing public demonstrations against the peace treaty and was sent into solitary confinement in Tengzhou, Guangxi.  There a prefect entrapped him into writing poems critical of Qin Hui.  Thus, in 1144, he found himself in Qiongzhou (now Haikou), where he would spend the next eight years.  He courageously began to record his private history in defiance of the chief councillor.

Over at southern Hainan in 1147, Zhao Ding fasted to death, hoping that his death would avert further disaster from striking his family.  After his suicide, his family sent his coffin, together with his personal papers, to his native Chuchou (present Wenxi County) for burial.  The local magistrate there was the son of former “nefarious minister” Zhang Dun (章惇, 1035-1105).

Under the mistaken supposition that Zhao Ding was related to Zhao Dingzi (趙挺之; Chief Councillor, 1105-1107), he blamed the former for his father’s downfall.  Falsely accusing the Zhao’s family of manufacturing illegal alcohol, he instructed the local sheriff to conduct a search.  His aim was to acquire Zhao’s personal papers.  Despite the immense pressure, the upright sheriff pre-warned Zhao’s family a day before the raid.  They burnt his notes.

Out of fear, Li Guang’s family in Shaoxing also flamed his library of more than ten thousand juan (卷; books or volumes).

A year after Zhao Ding’s death, Hu Quan was relegated to Jiyang County for suggesting in his poems the injustice of his banishment to Fujian.  Song Zi, the local Li head, respected him, making him a school teacher.  His stay lasted seven years, during which time he completed a book, a private history.  In 1150 he requested a preface from Li Guang, who had earlier contacted and communicated with him.  

Unfortunately, a local informant reported Li Meng-chien’s (1115-1169) recitation of his father’s private history.  The son was arrested and exiled to Xiazhou in Hubei while the father was informed of his exclusion from future amnesty and commanded in 1152 to move to Changhua military district (present-day Danzhou City).  Receiving news of his son’s plight and notification of his transfer, the elder Li immediately burned his notes, including his draft preface.  He declined to re-write the preface, although he did offer a marriage between his granddaughter and Hu’s oldest son.  Li Guang died in Hainan.  He was in exile for a total of thirteen years.

After Qin Hui’s death, emperor Gaozong attempted to rehabilitate his own reputation, blaming the former for much of the state mismanagement.  He dismissed the chief councillor’s sons from their positions and ordered them to return home.  Hu Quan was fortunate: he was allowed to move back to Guangdong.  The following year (1156), the emperor restored Zhao Ding’s honors.

By 1162 the fifty-four year old childless Gaozong had been in reign for thirty-five years.  A tired man, he voluntarily abdicated in favour of his adopted son, his nephew.  

Acknowledging that Hu Quan’s banishment was an injustice, emperor Xiaozong recalled him to the capital, where he was given appointments such as personal adviser to the emperor and compiler of the Veritable Records.  He finally resigned from the court as “Academician” (学士; Xueshi).

Xiaozong also conferred upon Zhao Ding the posthumous honour “Duke of Loyalty and Unfulfilled, High Aspirations” in 1163.  Many Chinese scholars regard Zhao as the best chancellor of the early Southern Song dynasty.


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Many Chinese scholars regard Zhao Ding as the best chancellor
of the early Southern Song dynasty.
(Statue in Tianya Haijiao Park, Sanya)
许多中国学者认为赵鼎为南宋初期的最好的校长。


**********************


Yue Fei too was exonerated by the emperor, who reburied him in Hangzhou.  A temple was built in his memory in 1221.  After frequent destruction and reconstruction over seven centuries, it was once again renovated in 1923.  Kneeling before his mausoleum were four iron statues: Qin Hui, his wife Madam Wang, and their two accomplices (Zhang Jun and Mo Qixie).  Over the ages, they were subject to spittle – and even urine - from visitors.  

While the appeaser Qin Hui was denounced in Chinese texts as a treacherous traitor, the four Song disgraced exiles and proponents of a strong non-submissive nationalist policy were esteemed as heroes.  Their simple statues, standing silently within the courtyard of Wugong Temple, do not adequately reflect their momentous contributions to Chinese history, or offer a hint of their unjust punishments and sufferings.

As I move slowly once again from one statue to the next, and reverentially stand in front of each, my mind nods in assent: Hainan was, for them, their “gate to Hell”.  

To the immediate left of “First Building” is Xuepu Hall, a single-storey building.  Indeed, the rest of the buildings within the compound are also single-storey.  As its name suggests, this hall was once haloed ground to students studying, amongst other things, gardening or farming and listening to lectures by famous Zhejiang scholar Guo Wanxiang, whose personal collection of eight thousand books formed the students’ library.  After his death from illness, his collection became the Wugong Library.  However, few of the books survived the centuries of pillage.

Today, this room is inexplicably occupied by three old cannons flanked by two Han dynasty bronze bells, one twice the size of the other.  The wooden carriages of the cannons have long disintegrated.  The barrels are now resting on two rows of low brick “wall”.
 
To the left of “Studying Farming Hall” is a long, relatively empty hall, the Wugong Jingshe (The Refined House of Five Lords, or West Hall).  Here, a century ago, students analysed historical works and poetry.  Today, on its walls are posters containing historical information about Hainan.  On one poster is a tiny photograph of the two statuettes of Madame Xian and Feng Bao.  In contrast to the several statues of the warrior-goddess, this tiny solitary representation of Feng Bao reflects his lesser significance.  

To the right of “First Building” is Guanjia Hall, the “Inspecting Crops Hall”.  According to the information given on the plaque, this building is not as old as the rest, being constructed only in 1889 and then reconstructed in 1915.  The name was initially pinned to the pavilion constructed during the early eighteenth century near Fusu Spring in the extreme right courtyard.  Embedded on the wall dividing the first and second courtyards are four tablets.

Strolling through the moon gate, we enter into the courtyard of Sugong Temple.  

“This temple is dedicated to the memory of Su Shi and his brother Su Zhe.”

“Su Shi?”

“Yes.”  I tell my incredulous, enquiring wife.  Su Shi is the famous Song poet, not the Japanese culinary delight “sushi”.  

“It is a funny name.  Did he invent the sushi?”

I have a chuckle.  Su Shi is better known as Su Dongpo (Eastern Slope Su), his nom de guerre.  He is a Renaissance man: an artist-calligrapher, pharmacologist, poet, politician, and writer.  He was exiled in Hainan from 1097 to 1100, twenty-six years before the agonizing collapse of Northern Song.

Surprisingly, this temple building has no front wall or doors.  Won’t the floor be flooded if the rain is too heavy and the wind too strong?  I blab to myself.  But my mind becomes distracted.  Standing prominently in the centre of the hall is the fibreglass statue of Su Dongpo.  A small metal plate - five centimetres by seven centimetres - attached to the rear of its base declares its maker:

 “T.H. Giam
  10 Jalan 27A, Selayang Baru 88100
  Batu Caves, Selangor, Malaysia”

 
According to a young Hainanese guide, who is waiting for clients, it was commissioned by some Singaporean businessmen.    

On the walls of the building are large bright and colourful murals depicting principal events in Su Dongpo’s life.  Su is wearing a gown with its upper half and long sleeves in brilliant-red, which matches the red pillars supporting the building.  The lower half of his gown is beige.  He stands out from the other persons.  Calligraphic characters are blended into the paintings, which succinctly tell the history of Dongpo Academy.  On the stone tablets in the Temple are inscribed his poems and essays.

 “Calming-Waves General” (“Fubo Jiangjun”) was the title awarded separately to two Han generals after their successful pacification of Hainan’s Li people two thousand years ago.  These two military leaders are honoured in the Two Fubo Temple.  The door to the hall before me is locked, dampening my expectation of scrutinizing the statues of these two commanders.  (On my third trip, the door is open but the hall is empty.  On its walls, however, are photographs of old buildings in Hainan.)  The black plaque on the exterior wall provides me with this information written in English:

“Lu Bode, Fubo General & Marquis Pili of Western Han Dynasty, and Ma Yuan,

Fubo General & Marquis Xinxi of Eastern Han Dynasty, went on the punitive expeditions

to Lingnan early or late, established nine counties such as Zhuya, Daner and so on,

performed the remarkable meritorious deeds for consolidating the southern frontiers

and maintaining the unification of motherland.”

It also adds that Lu Bode (路博德) and Ma Yuan (马援), worshipped by people in many temples scattered throughout Lingnan, were conferred posthumous honours by Song emperor Huizong, and that this temple was constructed in 1915.

I pass through the last moon gate and enter into the courtyard of Dongpo Academy, which ceased operation in 1899, only two decades after its relocation from Danzhou.  The academy had educated thousands of students for almost a millennium.  A large plaque on the wall to my left attests to its presence.  In its place, Qiongyuan (Jade Garden) consisting of pavilions, rockery, and flower beds was created by the local administration sixteen years later (1915).  Yes, the Xixin (Heart-cleansing) Pavilion, Millet Spring Pavilion, and Cave Corridor are still there.

What strike me first are the two wells on the lower ground in front of me as I enter the courtyard: the Fusuquan (Floating Millet Spring) Well and the Xixinquan (Heart-cleansing Spring) Well.  The first is named for the little bubbles emanating from the well water.  Knowing the difficulty of obtaining fresh water, Su Dongpo constructed these two wells for the natives.  Was this literary man capable of doing engineering or practical work?  Sure.  When he was Governor of Hangzhou, he had West Lake dredged and a causeway built, thus ridding the fertile ground of stagnant water and diseases like malaria.  The grateful inhabitants there later named the causeway in honour of him; here they commemorate his contribution with a temple.

The modest poet wrote a poem about the two spring wells.  Reproduced from the plaque on the Jiongzhuo Pavilion, its translation reads:

 There are Fusu Spring and Xixin Spring at the sides of Jiongzhuo Pavilion.
Mixing the water drawn from the two springs in the bottle,
chilly & dense, an integral whole,
which has been made for tea or cooking,
the people have been profuse in praise with one voice.
From Yangtse River to the Ocean, boundless & unselfish.
Is it possible that because I (Mr Su Dongpo) am a man of integrity,
the fountainhead converged in the Ocean can present such generous gift.
Please go on a tour of this place, everybody,
for drinking the spring water drilled by me and reading & appreciating my poem.

 
When I glance at the faces of the few visitors in Jade Garden, I see expressions of joy, peace, and tranquillity.  Yet, on the very spot where I am standing, exiles over a millennium ago woke up in terror to each new day.  They who had contributed so much to the improvement of their society were punished for the most trivial of reasons.  Their prestige was gone.  Once they were standing on the pinnacle of the world; now they were in the pits, where the “barbarians” roamed.  They were far from their relatives and friends; they were far from their familiar world.  They saw themselves as castaways in hell.  Life did not seem worth living.  Did they, in their daily lives, pour scorns upon their emperor and his sycophants, those who had betrayed them?

Su Dongpo was a devout Buddhist.  In his Danzhou home were Sixteen Arhats icons before which he regularly placed tea offerings.  Interestingly, he wrote to his younger brother Su Zhe: “Whenever a tea offering was made, a transformation occurred, which turned the tea into milky floats.”  The miracles.  His strong faith had safely carried him through the adversities that afflicted him.  

Hidden from view behind the Heart-cleansing Pavilion is a Buddhist temple, which houses a solid bronze sitting Buddha cast here in Fucheng suburb for nearby Tiannan (now Tianning) Temple during the Song dynasty.  Plundered and taken to Guangzhou by Japanese troops for transportation to Japan, it was abandoned when they were defeated.  Buddha finally finds its way back when the People’s Republic was declared.

Walking out of the beautiful park, I hear again the ringing voice of Solomon:  “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labour in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.  There was no profit under the sun.”  

Serene is the setting before me.  The coconut trees sway with the wind.  Green is the dominant colour, my favourite colour.  More people are streaming into the park.  Do they ever pause and ponder, offering thanks for the blessed lives they are now feteing?  Do they whisper a grace to their ancestors who have bequeathed them a Hawaii of the East?  Do they even realise they are living in a paradise?  

Mainlanders are now clamouring to enter their paradise.  Nouveau riche magnates from financial bastions like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are snapping up holiday homes.  Foreigners too want a piece of the hell that Li Deyu feared.  In increasing numbers, tourists are flying to the gate of hell.

Although the West seduces, Hainanese students and residents abroad are returning.  At the souvenir shop selling dried fruits, sweets, tins of coffee powder and tea, tee-shirts, and other local products, we meet proprietor Wang Xin (王欣).  A fellow Hainanese, she has secured a Masters in Business Administration degree in Canada and has also worked there for several years.  But sacrificing a financially rewarding future, she has returned to take care of her husband’s family.  Such dedication and devotion to family, especially extended family, is common in Hainan.  She and her husband have two children, one aged five and the other aged seven.  Her husband Xie Sheng Wen (谢胜文) would establish and manage a similar but larger shop in downtown Haikou two years later.

Wang Xin tells us an interesting story: Li Gang’s descendants from his ancestral village of Shaowu, Fujian Province, have made regular visits to Wugong Temple to pay homage to their illustrious progenitor.  “That is wonderful.  It is good to know that they have such a courageous man as their ancestor,” I happily remark.

For souvenir, this pretty lady recommends the tin of “3-in-1” coffee powder.  She makes a sample.  A mix of locally produced coffee powder, skim milk, and sugar, it tastes superb.  After an enlightening conversation, my wife and I take the same bus back to the hotel at three in the afternoon.  We have dim sim at the café beside our hotel entrance.


 
Hai Rui, the upright Ming official



After freshening up, we board a No. 1 bus bound west along Haixiu East Road for Hai Rui Tomb.  The Qiongshan native buried there has attracted unanticipated interest from government leaders and the public over the past five decades.  In February 1979, a play was staged, recapitulating his life and gallantry.  Sadly for its author, imprisonment was his fate during the Cultural Revolution, that chaotic ten-year period from 1966 to 1976 when Chairman Mao Zedong, in mockery, compared his Defence Minister, a Long March comrade, to the Ming official.  

Just five kilometres southwest of Haikou city centre, the tomb is situated in Xiuying District, in a small park along the Qiuhai Avenue that intersects with Haixiu Middle Road in the north and Binya Road in the south.  Who is this enigmatic official, who was largely unknown outside Hainan until the mid-twentieth century?  I silently repeat that question to myself during the journey.

We alight as soon as the bus has crossed over Qiuhai expressway.  At Haikou West Station, we hail a motorized trishaw.  For the one-kilometre distance, we pay the negotiated 4 RMB.  That turns out to be a wise decision.  The gate at Hai Rui Tomb closes at six in the evening.  We fail to note that restriction, assuming it to be an unenclosed public park.

 Sympathetically, the ticketing officer allows us in.  We have twenty minutes for our excursion, he says.  Admission is 20 RMB per person.  The green tourist map on the wall offers some valuable facts on the interesting features.  The sun is setting but its last rays are still good for capturing vivid scenes by our cameras.   My earlier information tells me that this park covers about 7.4 acres, roughly three soccer pitches, which can be visited within our limited timespan.  We quicken our pace.

From the entrance, we discern a well-manicured park, in the middle of which is a broad central path.  At the start of this path is a high stone “pailou”.  This archway is atypical, unlike most traditional ones which are colourful and highly decorative.  The four tall square vertical concrete columns that uphold six similar but smaller horizontal bars are grey and without colours or decorations, except for the chiselled official hat on each column top and the traditional Chinese characters in red on the middle horizontal bars.  The four characters on the lower lintel read: 粤東正氣.  Literally, the phrase “Yue Dong Zheng Qi” means “Eastern Yue Upright Spirit”.  The remarkable man buried here was - apparently - the Upright Spirit of Eastern Yue, “Eastern Yue” being the traditional name for Guangdong Province, under which Hainan was an administrative district.  Guangdong was the ancient home of the Yue ethnic tribe.

Just above these characters are two smaller characters, which I perceive to be a 上 (“shang”, or “rising”) above a 日 (“ri”, or “sun”).  So Hai Rui is “the rising sun”, the man who brought light and glory to Eastern Yue.  [But when I later examine my photograph, my initial assumption does not seem right.  The bottom character appears to be 曰.  “Yue” means “speak, say”.  “上曰” does not make sense; I am baffled.  During my fourth trip, Xue Xin drives me to the entrance.  I ask the ticketing officer, and my puzzle is solved.  The two characters are the contraction of 皇上曰 (Huangshang yue; or “The Emperor says”).  The emperor lauded Guangdong people, epitomized in Hai Rui, for their upright spirit.]

No litter is evident on the broad path, which is paved with grey granite tiles.  To our left and right are life-size stone statues of lions, sheep, tortoises, and human beings.  On both sides too are waist-high green hedges, trimmed to shape like rectangular boxes.  Behind them, tall coconut palms with green fronds stand erect in straight lines.  My eyes are overwhelmed by the “greenness” of the features.  Behind the hedges on our left is the Hai Rui Repository, a single-storey building housing artefacts pertaining to the official.

At the end of the path is a two-metre stele resting on the back of a tortoise, a common element in many imperial or renowned memorial temples.  Engraved with Chinese characters, this stele lists Hai Rui’s history and achievements.  As we walk pass this stele, we catch sight of his tomb and statue.  His tomb lies beneath a burial mound built with bricks in the shape of an ancient bell three metres in height.  A stone tablet identifies the deceased within.  The two small censers are filled with white ashes from burnt-out incense sticks.  Ashes have spilled onto the ground.

Behind the burial mound is a large statue of Hai Rui in his official gown and hat, seated on a platform and clutching a court memorial, a petition to the emperor.  Below him is a stone censer of burnt-out incense sticks.  Again, the incense holder is full of white ashes, and ashes are the only litter in this huge compound.

Classical in Chinese architecture, the pavilions, which catch our attention, were constructed only two decades ago, after the site had been ransacked and damaged by the rampaging Red Guards.  In their carefully designed layout of this Chinese-styled garden, the planners had even cleverly teased unsuspecting visitors with an optical illusion.

Yanglian Pavilion lies behind the Hai Rui statue.  This pavilion is marked on the tourist map as “Incorruptibility Advocating Pavilion”; the characters on the large signboard above its window are: 扬廉轩 (“Yang Lian Xuan”, which literally means “Raising Honesty Room”).  It is a simple single-storey pavilion with “sweeping” roofs (that is, roofs which curve and have ends that point skywards).  However, viewed from the entrance, it seems to form the lower part of the pavilion behind it, the three-storey circular Qingfeng Chamber (清风阁; Qingfeng Ge).

Clearly visible not only to us standing initially at the entrance but also to attentive passengers in motor vehicles driving along the main Qiuhai Avenue, or the side Hai Rui Road, this modern “Pavilion of Cool Breeze” is the most distinctive piece of architecture of this park.  At about ten metres in height, it has three circular roofs that are straight-inclined.  The colour of the green glazed-tiled roofs is softened by their red wooden edges and the red columns of the pavilion.  Its highest roof is reminiscent of the rustic straw hats worn by farmers toiling in their fields.  This traditional building shines among the surrounding modern condominiums.  It is a worthy tribute to the great post-medieval man.

 Between these two pavilions is a small man-made pond.  “Stainless Pond” (不染池; Buran Chi) is a reminder of Hai Rui’s integrity.  Chinese have interesting names to emphasize the personality of the person they honour.  Some green flowerless lotuses thrive.  Are there goldfishes or koi swimming merrily?  None surfaces.  

A smaller pavilion at the end of the park is aesthetically placed on higher ground, on a miniature ridge moulded from rugged rocks and soil brought here.  During a rainy day, the running waterfall from the “cliff” of this hill will soothe the visitor’s soul.  Leading to this Octagonal Pavilion is a sheltered passageway on the left.  On its wall is a series of black-and-white illustrations about Hai Rui’s life and deeds.  They are, I presume, enlarged posters from a comic book.  We walk sprightly, photographing as many as we can.  Besides us, another visitor - a gentleman - has the same idea.  So who was Hai Rui, who merits such a grandiose monument in Haikou downtown?
 
During my subsequent forage into his history, some interesting facts emerge.  First, he and the famous Admiral Zheng He (Wade-Giles: Cheng Ho) are Muslims.  Second, they belong to the same ethnic minority, the Hui.  Third, they served the Ming emperor.  However, Zheng He (1371-1433) lived a century before Hai Rui.  The admiral commanded seven naval expeditions as far west as Africa at the behests of third and fifth Ming emperors Yongle and Xuande.  His voyages predated those of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) by some nine decades.  Hai Rui (1514 to 1587) lived and ministered during the later and less glorious half of the Ming Empire, an empire governed by sixteen emperors over a span of two hundred and seventy-six years.

Hai Rui was born in 1514, seven years after Zhu Houcong, who was to become the Jiajing emperor.  The future eleventh Ming emperor was born in September 1507 and died in January 1567.  Being only a cousin of emperor Zhengde, he was not destined to rule and was therefore not trained to be an emperor.  But he was thrust into it when his cousin died suddenly at the age of thirty without an heir.  

At the tender age of fourteen, the new emperor called his era “Admirable Tranquillity”.  It turned out otherwise.

First, to the dismay of court officials, he broke with tradition, which dictated his posthumous adoption as Zhengde’s son to depict the continuity of orderly succession.  Instead, he conferred the posthumous title of “Emperor” on his father, which had ominous implications on the legitimacy of his cousin’s reign.  Was his cousin, rumoured to be a frequent brothel patron, too profligate to be historically regarded as his adopted father?  Officials who criticized the young emperor’s action were exiled or punished.

Second, like his cousin, the Jiajing emperor was lazy and cruel.  He commissioned Yan Song as Chief Grand Secretary and other incompetents as officials.  After eighteen years of reign, he refused to grant audience to his ministers, except to a select few.  Such was the hatred for him that even his concubines or palace ladies almost succeeded in assassinating him in 1542.  The military weakness of his empire encouraged the Mongols to attack Beijing.  They stopped only when they were paid off.  At a huge cost too, the emperor built lavish temples promoting Daoism.  Did he practise a form of sexual Daoism, dying of mercury poisoning in his quest for the elixir of life, as commonly alleged?  

Hai Rui lived through the troubled times of Jiajing’s reign and the reigns of his successors.  Like many ambitious families in the Chinese empire, Hai Rui’s family in Qiongshan District was no exception.  (Their residence, now a tourist spot, is located at the corner of Hongchenghu Road and Zhuyun Road, facing Hongcheng Lake.)  His father devoted his life studying for the provincial examinations but died in his prime, leaving his long-suffering wife to toil and care for the bereaving members.

Guided by the memory of his high-aspiring father, Hai Rui persevered in his footstep.  After some unsuccessful attempts, he finally passed the provincial examinations and graduated as a juren (literally, Recommended Person) at the advanced age of thirty-five years (in 1549) to embark on a career as school educator.  

Diligence led ultimately to his promotion as bureau secretary in the Ministry of Revenue in 1564.  A scrupulous and empathetic official, he made many friends among the peasants.  But he also made enemies among the elite.  Frank and honest, he imprudently fired a memorial in 1566 to the emperor, admonishing him for neglecting his royal duties as well as for his obsession with Daoism and Daoist temple constructions on which he had wasted valuable government fund.  Hai Rui thundered:


“How would you compare yourself with Emperor Wen Di of the Han dynasty? 

You did a fairly good job in your early years, but what has happened to you now? 

For nearly twenty years you have not appeared in the imperial court, and you have appointed many fools

to the government.  By refusing to see your own sons, you are mean to your own blood;

by suspecting court officials, you are mean to your subordinates; and by living in the Western Park

refusing to come home, you are mean to your wife.  Now the country is filled with corrupt officials

and weak generals; peasants begin to revolt everywhere….In my judgement you are much inferior

to Emperor Wen Di.

….Your shortcomings are numerous: rudeness, short-temperedness, self-righteousness, and

deafness to honest criticism.  But worst of all is your search for immortality….”

 
Being compared unfavourably with emperors of the past, the fun-loving ruler was vacillating on his decision to sign imprisoned Hai Rui’s death warrant.  Fortuitously, he expired, thus sparing the widely-respected official’s life.  

Wishing to signal a fresh start, Jiajing’s son - the Longqing (Great Celebration) emperor - restored Hai Rui to his directorship of census.  Thirty-year old Zhu Zaihou was initially an enthusiastic ruler.  But like his father, he soon succumbed to the same temptations.  Meanwhile, the fearless Hainan official, who was appointed Grand Coordinator at Yingtian (Nanjing) in mid-1569, antagonized other bureaucrats, exposing their corruption and misappropriation of peasants’ land.

Their collusion led to his dismissal from office at the age of fifty-five in 1571.  The following year, aged thirty-five, Longqing died.  His son, the Wanli emperor, was only ten and under the tutelage of a regent.

Fifteen years later, fortune smiled once again upon Hai Rui.  He was seventy-one.  Pardoned, he became Chief Censor of Nanjing.  But he died from illness shortly thereafter, mourned by the thousands in white attire lining along the hundred kilometres of Yangzi river banks to farewell the boat that carried his body to Hainan.  In their memory was his love for the masses and his deep sense of justice in rectifying convictions founded on manufactured evidence and unsubstantiated allegations.  They saw in him the reincarnated Justice Bao Zheng, the legendary Song official.  Two years later, his admirers began building his tomb, the tomb which had been extensively renovated for our appreciation.  

As I briefly scan the drawings in the “Comic Strip Gallery” along the passageway wall, I cannot help but stand in awe of the Ming emperors.  Despite their personal ethical deficiencies, they were generally not ethnically or religiously biased in official appointments.  Influenced by their Confucianist education, they espoused meritocracy, employing and promoting people based on desert.

Poor Ma He (马和) was only an eleven-year old boy living in a Yunnan village when he was captured by a Ming army commander suppressing a Mongol rebellion that had erupted in that region.  He was castrated; yet he discharged loyalty to the imperial court, which later elevated him to be naval commander.  Emperor Yongle’s trust in him was remarkable, as reflected in his new surname bestowed by the ruler.  While “Ma” refers merely to a horse, “Zheng” (郑) has the approximate meaning of “sincere”.

Hai Rui, a Hui, too received that same level of trust from his emperor.  Although his dream, the construction of two roads across the inaccessible Li territory, did not materialize during his lifetime, it did five centuries later.  Originating from Haikou in the north, the Central Highway, as its name denotes, runs through the mountainous central region and terminates at Sanya in the south.  Today, tourists enjoy easy access to the beauty of the misty green peaks that sustain an amazing diversity of wildlife, plants, and insects.

Not only a source of pain to his Ming emperor, Hai Rui was indirectly also the cause of death of a twentieth-century Chinese historian.  Wu Han initially contributed erudite scholarly articles to academic tomes that dwelt unread in library shacks and then innocuously forgotten.

His trouble started when he popularized his subject in a play easily comprehensible to the layman.  “Hai Rui Baguan” (“Hai Rui’s Dismissal”) was originally issued in 1951 but was revised a few times.  In February 1961, the periodical Beijing Literature and Art (Beijing Wenyi) published the original version.  An opera based on his work became a runaway success.  Emerging so soon after the catastrophes of the Great Leap Forward and criticisms against its proponents, the circulation of the play and production of the opera would have dire consequences for the author and other politicians.  

Mao Zedong’s attention perked at the reference to the Ming official.  In November 1965, a member of the infamous “Gang of Four” political faction denounced the play as an anti-Party poisonous weed.  The parallel was invidiously alluded to between Hai Rui vis-a-vis his relationship with the aloof Ming emperor and Peng Dehuai vis-a-vis his frosty relationship with his leader.  Honest loyalist Hai Rui was dismissed and imprisoned by the emperor; forthright Long March veteran Marshall Peng was dismissed as defense minister in 1959 by Mao (who was intolerant of any reference to bungles of his 1958 economic policy).  If Hai Rui’s dismissal was unjustified, then was Marshall Peng’s dismissal similarly unjustified?  That was the rhetorical question.

Thus began the hysterical period of the Cultural Revolution of 1966, terminating only ten years later.  Spearheading the delirium was the Cultural Revolution Group established in May 1966.  Chen Boda was its head, and Jiang Qing - Mrs Mao - was his first deputy.  Under their direction, denunciations of other authors and literary works freely flowed.  

Wu Han was imprisoned.  Born in 1909 in the coastal province of Zhejiang, the historian-cum-playwright was educated at Qinghua (Tsinghua) University in Beijing.  He was noted for his prior historical research, the publication in 1943 of his biography of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty, a work which he expanded in 1947.  During the nineteen-forties, Wu was a leading member of the China Democratic League.  After the foundation of the Chinese republic, he was offered the deputy mayorship of Beijing.  The promising gentleman died in October 1969, apparently from torture and untreated tuberculosis.

Wearing a Ming official outfit in abject subjection to Mao’s hint, Marshall Peng Dehuai paraded in humiliation to the Red Guards’ hiss and brays.  His deference did not save him.  The former Defense Minister was arrested and imprisoned, his immense contribution during the Long March and to the reunification of a war-torn China disrespectfully ignored.  Tortured by his callous captors, he died in November 1974.  

When the directionless dust had finally settled ten years later (May 1976), the declining Mao belatedly ticked off Jiang Qing and her three chief collaborators for “functioning as a gang of four”.  A month after his death in September 1976, they were deposed, tried, and imprisoned for twenty years or for life.  After her early release in 1991 due to throat cancer, Jiang Qing committed suicide in hospital.  Also arrested and tried at the same time as the Gang of Four, Chen Boda was given an early release from his eighteen-year sentence due to ill-health.  He died aged eighty-five in 1989.

Wu Han’s play was restaged in February 1979, restoring his reputation although not his life.  Marshall Peng’s reputation too was later rehabilitated.  

In awe, we leave Hai Rui’s monument.  His life inspires; yet it also incriminates.  Three hundred years later, his harsh admonitions reverberated.  The paragon of virtue became a political symbol.  In many people today, his sense of justice and fairness is lost or forgotten.  Pretending not to understand us even though we point to the traffic junction about one kilometre distant and show him the map, a trishaw driver - a non-local, judging by his accent - quotes a ridiculous fare of 30 RMB, treating us as fools.  We flatly turn him down, saying that we would rather walk.  The sun has set; it is dark, but the street lights brighten the road.  We walk - along the side of a highway.  A bus passes; it stops, dropping off two passengers.  They are ladies; they are walking ahead of us in the same direction.  We feel safe, although safety is not really a problem in this island.

Bell Tower and Evergreen Park again, shopping at Old Haikou

 
After lunch at a Daying Road café, we hail an electric rickshaw.  The fare quoted to the Bell Tower is 9 RMB, which I bargain down to 8 RMB.  The young owner’s round face is almost fully covered with a woollen mask, shielding it from the grime of traffic fumes and harmful rays of the sun.  Although he is wearing a jacket, a pair of pants, a pair of shoes, and a pair of gloves that expose only his finger digits, he says he is feeling cold.  I suppose he is right; for the slightest of wind will chill the bones of any person who remains stationary like he does on his seat for three or four hours during a winter morning, it being the tenth of January.

Only twenty-five years of age, Weng Zhong Jian (翁忠健) leaves his family home in Wenchang to work in Haikou.  He has an aunt who is living in Singapore.  He is a jovial but humble person.  In answer to my questions in pidgin Hainanese and Mandarin, he frankly reveals he is engaging in this profession because of his disinterest in studies.  The higher fuel and electricity cost, he laments, is making his job financially more difficult.

“Are you married?”  I probe.
“No.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
He laughed.  “No.  How can I afford one with my kind of income?”

As we converse, I silently deliberate over the prospect for a young trishaw driver like him.  A decade hence, Hainan will be an even more prosperous province.  More cabs will ply the street.  Will there be enough passengers to augment the meagre income of trishaw drivers?  [Sadly for him, in 2015, the trishaw was banned in Haikou central because of road congestion and safety reason.]

During the nineteen-fifties, numerous pedicabs crowded the streets of Singapore in competition with buses, taxis, and trams for local patrons.  Now, only tourists book them for the exotic thrill of their foreign excursion.  When my wife and I disembark at the corner of Changdi Road and Xinhua South Road, I - generously - part with 10 RMB.  “What is an extra 1 or 2 RMB; it is only 20 or 40 cents,” I mumble to myself.  He deserves it.  Frequent oil price increases from global scarcity have hit the citizens here.  It will only get worse if fuel, and hence electricity cost accelerates.

Jo’s attention is gripped by the bustling activities near the shops at the top end of old Haikou.  Resolving to visit them later, we cross the road to have a better view of Bell Tower.  We pause in the middle of Renmin Bridge walkway, to watch the river scene below us while vehicles are zooming past behind us along their lanes.  After crossing the bridge, we descend the flight of stairs to Haidian East Road.

Four open-back trucks are parked near the stairs.  They have their sides unhinged to reveal their ware: papaya.  A cardboard sign on each vehicle declares the price: 1 yuan per jin (20 cents per half kilogram).  That is very cheap for Australian or Singaporean tourists; they are paying about A$2 or S$2 per kilogram back home.  The skins of the fruits are a mixture of green and light-yellow.  They are unbruised.  A few more days and the highly nutritious fruits may be consumed.  They are tempting.  Unfortunately for us, they are too heavy to lug around.

Beneath an arch of the bridge is a square table around which three elderly men and one woman are seated, playing cards.  Near them on the floor is a large plastic sheet displayed with goods rescued from household rubbish bins.  The vendor is arranging the items while three squatting onlookers inspect his ware.  Under the next arch is a hawker with his push cart on which are plates of marinated fish, cuttlefish, and clams.  He is ready to cook any order in his wok, heated by the burning fuel from the portable gas cylinder.  I am impressed by the resourcefulness and self-reliance of the people here.

Along the narrow pavement by the river are the fishmongers and their wares.  Like me, Jo is also fascinated, although fewer sellers, clients, and spectators are still lingering around.  I point to the fishermen living in those boats anchored by the river bank.  Two - a man and his wife - are repairing their net on the pavement.  In addition to his two small green turtles swimming aimlessly in a plastic basin, a tray of sea cucumbers, a net of about ten crabs, and a large tray of oysters, a young couple is also peddling two adult pheasants and three small birds that resemble quails.

Professor Liang Wei later confirms the identity of the full-grown pheasants: they are Common Pheasants.  The Common Pheasant is to be distinguished from the Hainan Peacock-Pheasant, although both species belong to the same pheasant family, Phasianidae.  The two caged pheasants are about forty centimetres in height.  They have reddish-brown feathers and they are very attractive.  They are also probably female.  Except for the round red patch surrounding their eyes and their yellowish beaks, the upper part of their neck is bluish-black.  I wish they could live a carefree life in the forest, instead of showing up on someone’s dinner plate.

Their legs trussed separately, the small birds are light greyish-brown in colour with six pairs of alternating dark-brown and white strips on both sides of their body under their short wings.  Their beaks are tiny, dark-red, and hooked while their legs are light-red.  On their throats, just below their beaks and eyes, is a white patch.  They are not quails.  

They are Chukar Partridges.  Professor Liang may not know it but he has enlightened me.  I now have a vivid conception, although a sad one, of a partridge when I next sing the “Twelve Days of Christmas” in church.

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…
A Partridge on a Pear Tree….”

 The Chukar Partridge takes its names from its call: “chukar chukar”.  It also belongs to the pheasant family, Phasianidae.  It is a magnificent bird like the Common Pheasant and Peacock-Pheasant.  While the three Chukar Partridges I encounter are about twenty centimetres in height, an adult can grow to thirty-eight centimetres.  They are native to Asia and Western Europe but introduced into England, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, and U.S.A. for sports hunting.  These plump gamebirds take short but quick flight when flushed from the bush.  They are not found in Australia.  Their diet consists of insects, seeds, shoots, and buds.  In Lushan town, Jiangxi, a local dish is known as Three-cup Chukar: the meat is braised in three cups of liquid - wine, soya sauce, and lard.  Fortunately, unlike the Hainan Hill-Partridge, the Chukar Partridge is not a species “vulnerable” to extinction.

Around three in the afternoon, we catch a bus to Wanlu Park.  Jo is impressed by its size and layout.  In this expanse of green, some city workers are taking a respite.  They are sitting on benches, talking.  It is a slightly windy day, ideal for four unrelated persons to fly their kites at the vacant field.  They draw some passerbys.  The kites are ordinary; yet the normal spectacle reveals the freedom local residents now relish, indulging in an innocuous pastime.  Not so long ago, kite-flying was denounced as a bourgeois activity, potentially earning the flyer a three-year jail.

Over at the exercise area is a man in his mid-fifties.  He is extremely fit.  With his legs lifted horizontally to the ground, he agilely swings himself from one end to the other end of the parallel bar.  He cheerfully repeats his skill for Jo to snap a souvenir shot.

Nearer to the beach is a cute but strange-looking bird, strutting around the deserted patch of grass that is shaded under the branches and foliage of some tall trees.  About thirty centimetres in length, it pauses intermittently, its “chopstick” beak probing the ground, apparently for insects or worms.  Its black wings are marked with five white stripes, making it an aerial zebra, while its long and slender grey beak and crown of feathers give its head the visual impression of a hammer or chisel.  Its entire slim body, including its crown, is light-brown, except that the crown of feathers has short black strips.  

What an array of colours!  Excluding the myna, this is the fifth species of bird that I have spotted in Wanlu Park.  It is amazing that the bird life here is so rich.  Is it a woodpecker?

A Eurasian hoopoe, says Professor Liang.  Hoopoes are related to kingfishers; they belong to the Coraciiformes order.  Resident in Asia and equatorial Africa, they are territorial and aggressive, fighting and even stabbing their rivals in the eye, thus blinding them.  They secrete a foul-smelling liquid to deter predators.  And they are not afraid of people.  In Judaism, hoopoes, eagles, owls, seagulls, and vultures, are forbidden from human consumption.

 Interestingly, a national bird contest was held in Israel in 2007.  After six months of voting, the finalists included the bulbul, night owl, red falcon, goldfinch, honeysucker, spur-winged plover, griffon vulture, warbler, and white-crested kingfisher.  The following year, Prime Minister Shimon Peres announced the winner: 30 percent of the votes went to the hoopoe, followed by the tiny warbler with 10.3 percent and the finch with 9.8 percent.  The hoopoe became their national bird.

Strolling around the park, we reach an arched bridge, where some people are leaning over its sides to inspect the salt-water river.  Have they found something fascinating?  Curious, we join them.  A spelling error in the name of the bridge has been made on the small plaque, I confidently inform myself; the “V” in “LV YUAN JIAO” (“Green Garden Bridge”) should be replaced with a “U”.  “Lu” in Chinese means “Green”.  Little do I know until I consult my pocket dictionary that, in Hanyu Pinyin, the letter “u” carries the diacritical mark of two dots (ü) in some instances where it follows the letters “l” and “n”.  The words “lü” and “nü” for the green colour and a girl respectively are pronounced like “lee” and “nee”, and rendered as “lv” and “nv” even by computer translation program.   

Because it is low tide, the water is shallow, although the river bed, which we estimate to be about two metres below the surface, is not visible.  No weeds float on the water surface or underneath, which would evidence its pristine conditions.  A middle-aged man in his late fifties is fishing from the bridge while a couple and their young son are fishing from the partially rocky bank of the receding river.  Their fishing equipment is odd: a quarter-litre open-neck glass bottle containing a pellet of flour.  When it is hauled up, the unwary small fish trapped feeding greedily is only five centimetres in length.

Walking upstream along the path beside the river, we come to the terminus, a pond, where nineteen small fibre-glass paddle boats are moored to a long floating platform.  Fitted with Donald Duck heads, these rental toys will attract holiday makers.  But today, only one is moving, with a young couple in it.  They must be on holiday too.  Our casual tour has come to an end.  We are famished for dinner at the nearby cafe.  It is evening.  

Crowds flock the streets of Old Haikou, marked by the boundaries of Bo’ai Road, Changdi Road, and Haixiu East Road.  “Where do they come from?” my wife rhetorically raises.  Many may be tourists like us.  The narrow streets are heavy with traffic.  Motorized and leg-pedalled trishaws meandered around the pedestrians and through traffic gaps.  Their owners are busy, stopping only when seeking fares.

Individualism is the hallmark of each old building, even though they are lined alongside one another on the same street.  One building is two-storey high, another on its right is three-storey high, and the other on its left is four-storey high.  Even their widths differ; so too the shapes of their windows.  One has square windows; another has an arched window on each floor; and the third has three arched windows on each floor.

Some building facades look grim.  Although the stone structures are solid and secure, some sections of the side walls have fallen off.  Two pillars on the second floor of one house, however, have long disintegrated; yet people are still living in it.  Many of the stores below the living quarters are selling similar items like clothing, shoes, socks, cell phones, watches, DVDs, and accessories.  Enticed by their cheap prices, Jo picks up some nick nacks.

A big bookstore tells me that the map I am relying on would no longer be printed.  New maps would not have bus numbers printed on the roads.  That is disastrous for someone like me.  Captivating though the sceneries may be, it has been a long day, and we must return to rest.

 

Volcanic Park and the Village God created by man

 

Genuine volcanic craters always fascinate me.  Ever since I read a book on gemmology many years ago, I was hoping to find a raw diamond exposed in a dry crater.  Diamonds are crystallized carbons, compacted in the heart of our planet.  They were brought to the surface by molten lava.  Over the eons, weathering had eroded the diamond-bearing kimberlite pipes, thus exhibiting the hardest mineral.

My wife and I had visited an unfilled crater on Mount Gambier in South Australia during the nineteen-eighties.  It bears a crazy name: Leg of Mutton Crater.  Its famous sister is Blue Lake, so named because of its deep-blue water.  When we went down the stairs into the wide and deep void, I closely scrutinized its side.  I left disappointed.  An artificial volcano and simulated explosion was our next experience when we took a five-minute ferry to Sentosa, the tiny holiday isle, from Keppel Harbour cruise terminal in Singapore.  

Perhaps a diamond is waiting there for me in Shishan and Yongxing town, where a volcano-themed park was opened in January 2006.  Just twenty kilometres southwest of Haikou downtown, the Haikou-Shishan Volcanic Cluster National Geopark spreads over an area of about one hundred and eight square kilometres.  Like the Zhanjiang Huguangyan National Geopark in Guangdong, it also lies within the Leiqiong Rift Volcanic Belt.  Secretly, I am excited, struggling to suppress my anticipation of a rich find, overlooked by the uninformed, in a real volcanic crater.  We retire for an early night.

After an early lunch at the cafe outside our hotel entrance, we hail a taxi.  The Hainanese in his thirties has not visited the place.  Along the way, he lights two cigarettes, which deter us from booking him for the day.  I am also wary that he may be taking a longer route because we have not agreed on a pre-set fare.  Although the journey seems long, about forty-five minutes, the meter reads only 54 RMB.  Feeling generous, I hand him a 6-RMB tip since he has to patiently wait for exiting visitors to make his return journey financially worthwhile.  

It is one in the early afternoon.  At 60 RMB per adult, the admission fee is prohibitive to the locals but reasonable to us.  As a person above sixty years of age, I pay 30 RMB.  Without sunshine, the day is misty; it is cool, good for trampling up and down mountain slopes and into caverns.  We anticipate a long walk, and are thus prepared.

At the entrance is an emblem of a single tongue of fire ( ) carved out of lychee (Litchi chinensis) wood and placed on a foundation of basalts.  The emblem is stained in dark red colour.  The signboard on the right in part reads:

“People who have been living in the volcanic terrain of North Hainan often engraved

in the beam of house a fortunate symbol that [looks] like fire, or like a mountain, a man,

or horns of a black goat.  In fact it is a totem that exists in [the] heart of ‘Volcano people’.”
 
“Very well-planned” is our initial sense of the park.  Its symmetry is striking.  The straight paths are carefully inlaid with cobblestones and volcanic stones of various shapes and sizes to form pleasing designs.  With overhanging branches, numerous ficus line one side of the paths, providing ample ultraviolet protection to visitors during hot sunny days.  Interrupting the plots of short pruned shrubs are cycad palms.  Pots of bougainvilleas blooming with red flowers add colour to the largely green environment.  Along the paths are many unobtrusive slogans.  One urges, “Cherish the geological heritages for everlasting utilities from generation to generation.”  It is a very sagacious advice.

That joyful music attracts us to the restaurant about a hundred metres away.  Unfortunately, when we reach its front door, the aboriginal bamboo dance is coming to an end.  We miss a truly good show.  The patrons are rejoicing, their enthusiastic clapping resounding for those audience participants exhausted by vigorous jumping and hopping to the throbbing drum beat.  We leave them to resume their extended lunch.

Scattered aesthetically around the park are basalts of grotesque contours and dimensions.  Their names are suggestive: “Stone Camel”, “Golden Frog Greeting Guests”, “Dragon’s Water of the Volcano”, “Peace-keeping Stone”, and “Xuanwu Stone” (literally, “Mysterious Military Stone”).

The information given on one is: “Camel is the animal, hunger enduring and thirsty enduring, also indomitable in carrying out mission, which represents and symbolizes the spirit of residents in the volcanic terrain: tenacious, diligent, eager to develop and advance, keen on fighting in spite of all setbacks.”

A simple shrine about a metre high was made by the ancient inhabitants from basalt bricks.  In it is a small basalt rock, which they worshipped.  Indeed, people are still worshipping it, as the few burnt incense sticks in the stone holder attest.  The puzzling information on the “Stone God” (石公; Shigong) signboard arouses my curiosity:

 “Since a remote age in the volcanic area people got used to put a stone god at entrance

of village, called “Village God”.  They built a mini-temple using volcanic rocks, and

put a stone god inside.  After a Taoist ceremony the stone god gained a soul and

the Village God became the guarding god for the village in preventing from devil

and instructing directions, so people have been worshipping him until now.”

 Christian theology insists that God created man, who subsequently fell into idolatry, fashioning and worshipping figurines of animals and birds, even though they are lifeless and soulless.  But in the ethnic Li’s ratiocination, man is capable of creating gods with life and soul.  In other words, not only God can create man; man can also create living gods.  The key lies in the Taoist incantations.  Though that cultic process, the ancient dwellers here gestated the Stone God, who was then placed at the entrance of the village to protect residents from harm.  For good measure, they produced a few living gods.

Petrified tree trunks with masses of radiating roots had been uncovered after centuries of climatic changes.  Like the contemporary Japanese Kanamara-sama worshippers in Kawasaki, the early Li residents, whose natural innocence was reflected in their scanty attire, worshipped the human sexual organs because of their reproductive power.  About two metres in length, one tree trunk had been shaped into a penis, which “points” to the facing hollowed-out base of a shorter trunk.

Did the natives really bow and pray to these “gods”?  Nervously, we spin our heads.  Seeing nobody, each of us furtively poses beside one “god”, the other hurriedly snapping a photograph or two.  We also sit on an oversized “armchair”, shaped from a remnant trunk with gnarled roots.
 
Idly, we then ascend the gradual flight of steps up Ma’anling (马鞍岭; Saddle Ridge).  As its name implies, Ma’anling appears like a saddle when viewed from a distance.  On its slope is the Temple for Volcano God.  According to the signboard information, the Daoguang emperor, during his fourth year of reign (September 1820-February 1850), delivered a stone tablet to the residents, proclaiming that the volcanic mountains here were “ruled by God”.

As a result, three tablets were erected in this area, authenticating the presence of “Great god”, “Village god”, and “God to pray”.  From that time onwards, villagers had gathered here on Duanwu Day to pray and offer sacrifices to the mountain gods.  In addition, they sang and danced and staged other acts.  It was a joyous occasion for them.  

Beside the temple is a little restaurant.  “Delightful” is the English translation below its Mandarin name (悦目; Yuemu).  At the edge of the cliff, it offers not a “delightful” but vertiginous view of the steep hill escarpment to any diner who courageously leans out.  Fortunately, we have had our lunch.  We continue our climb.

Unfortunately, at the viewing platforms near the Ma’anling peak, the cloudy mist prevents us from enjoying a general perspective of Haikou downtown and Qiongzhou Strait.  They are too far off.  We can only see the villages at the foothills.

Standing at an elevation of 222.8 metres, Fengluling (风炉岭; Wind Furnace Ridge) is the peak, the higher of the two mountains that characterize the ridge.  Its crater is well camouflaged.  With pointers from my wife, my eyes slowly discern its presence.  I expect to confront a dark and barren cavernous hole in the ground.  A couple of centuries ago, it undoubtedly was.  Now, its fertile lava-rich slope has been smothered with creepers, ferns, moss, and small green plants, dashing my hope of ever finding any precious crystal.  The tenacity with which some of these plants are clinging onto the precipitous interior cliff of the crater astonishes me.

Many wild “Elephant Ear” plants are thriving on the gentler side.  These are members of the Araceae family.  Commonly known as “taro”, their roots or corms are cooked and consumed by the natives as part of their staple diet.  Over the centuries, these plants have been untouched and are hence saved from the cooking pots.  Some plants are flowering, which is a rare event.  The pale-yellow “petal”, which is actually a leaf, partly wraps the white flower stalk that bears the tiny white flowers.  

Steps have been hewn on this gentler slope for the benefit of visitors to explore the bottom of the crater.  The fallen volcanic rocks strewn here and there are identifiable.  More taro plants flourish at the bottom, suggesting an ample water supply.  During the rainy season, this crater would be filled with rainwater.  A line from the signboard at the lowest platform indirectly validates my guess.  “The Heavenly Lake was filled with hot magma.”  In short, this is actually a lake during the monsoon or typhoon season.  One should avoid coming down to the lowest platform during this period, or risk being drown during a sudden downpour.  The sign further volunteers:  

“The magma spilled out and passed through the notch in the east to form lava flows

and lava plateau.  The effusive process was followed by volcanic explosion; lava was thrown

into the air to form volcanic scoria, driblets, volcanic bombs and other volcanic ejects.”

 Scramble out, which is what we prudently do.  A large group of tourists passes us.  They are going down.  Are they aware that the last recorded eruption occurred in 1933, only eight decades earlier?  Eruptions have also occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth century in the Chengmai and Lin’gao area.  Around the globe, an average of fifty eruptions eventuated annually, some causing severe damages to lives and property.  The nagging doubt resurfaces: where can I hide if these volcanoes should suddenly erupt?  Most varieties of volcanoes are present in Hainan.  The fifty-eight Pleistocene-Holocene theoleiitic cones are distributed over four thousand one hundred square kilometres in the northern part of the island.

“Wild pineapples” too proliferate on the hillside.  But they are not true pineapples, which belong to the Bromeliad family.  They are Pandanus Fascicularis (or Odoratissimus) of the Pandanaceae family.  In the park area are also stone implements used by the ancient settlers.  The “Millstone” consists of two circular flat basalts, one larger than the other.  Placed on top, the smaller piece has a hole into which dry beans or grains are fed, and also an embedded wooden handle which the villager holds to manually rotate the stone to grind the item.  The leaking flour is channelled into a receptacle for collection.

Like giant dough-kneading rollers, two heavy cylindrical basalts form the upright “Juicer”, a primitive juice-extracting machine.  Did it inspire the invention of the small metallic sugar-cane juice extractors commonly found in Singapore food centres?  Half a metre in height each, the two stone rollers are vertically pivoted close to each other, onto a stone platform by the wooden axles that run through the roller cores.  One roller is rotated by a very long hardy wooden handle that is tied firmly to its top axle.  As a long cane is being forced through the narrow space between the two rollers by the arduous turns of the heavy handle, sugar-cane juice is being squeezed out, flowing down to the platform and draining into the stone receptacle by its side.  The sugary water is subsequently evaporated through boiling to produce sugar crystals.  Functioning similarly, oil presses are placed strategically in the park.

 Where there is volcano, there is hot spring, besides, of course, the rich soil and lush vegetation.  We walk along the elevated ground around a small pond and cross its zigzag bridge to see the numerous kois swimming in its clear spring water.  The red and white ones are highly visible even though they are at the far end.  As I look downwards, I can barely make out the black ones cloaked just beneath the water surface.  The cool weather is invigorating.

Adding to the allure of the exquisite park is a miniature waterfall near the rock that is inscribed with some cursive red Mandarin characters.  The collection of rare tropic plants around the pond is interesting: Areca palms, coconut palms, sprouting ferns, and flowering shrubs.  The care taken in developing this theme park reflects the wise investment of the local government.  Deservedly, the park received official praise from UNESCO in 2010.

In the centre of the pond is a huge sculpture - about two metres in length - of a tortoise coiled by a snake, the two facing each other in an attacking posture.  What is its symbolism?  I later learn that this statue is an enlarged replica of a small antique treasure in Beijing Museum.  The Xuanwu (玄武), which literally means “dark” and “martial”, is one of the four directional deities in Chinese mythology; it represents the north, which is purportedly dark and watery.  The “Dark Warrior” has a long history; its profiles were inscribed on bronze mirrors, paintings, and tomb bricks dating back to the Warring Period, some two thousand five hundred years ago.

By the inception of the Song dynasty, the reptilian celestial was transformed into an anthropomorphic god.  Its worship rapidly spread when emperor Zhenzong (reign: 998-1022), out of respect for an ancestor with a “Xuan” middle name, changed its rubric to Zhenwu (真武; Truly a Warrior).  Impetus was provided when his son Emperor Renzong testified of a divine cure to his illness.  From then on, the human god was worshipped.

 Three hours fly by so swiftly.  We want to tarry a little longer; for there is more to see.  But we must not tempt the volcano gods; they might just “blow” us out!  A day is insufficient for a visitor to marvel at all the attractions.  With more than forty volcanic craters and thirty caves and tunnels, the entertainment complex will physically exhaust even herculean athletes.  We must leave before the gate shuts us in for the night.  What creatures lurk within the park is something we do not wish to find out.  We do not want to be stranded.  

Wait for the bus opposite the entrance, the ticketing receptionist responds.  There is, however, no bus stand.  At four-thirty, a bus approaches and we frantically wave our hands.  The driver confirms his destination, Xiuying, where Haikou Wharf is located.  We are glad, although sad, to get out of that potentially explosive suburb.   The fare is only 4 RMB each.  Seven other passengers are in the bus.  Few houses are on the sides of the four-lane country road, which finally turns right to join the Hainan Central Highway.

 An overhead express train line is under construction along the dusty highway.  I gaze at the heavy concrete structure, an engineering feat.  The bus terminates along Xiuying Expressway as soon as it passes Xiuhua Road on our right.
 

Haikou Port Ferry Terminal and Xiuying Beach
 

Since darkness would descend in about three hours, we have enough time to see the nearby Xiuying Beach, which is a kilometre or two to the north.  Thanking a young gentleman for his assistance in identifying our position on the map, we jump unto the right bus.  After it has turned left into Binhai Avenue, we drop off at the first stop and walk towards Shuangyong Road.  This short road leads to a jetty.  A gate is sited mid-way but it is unguarded, except for the security camera riveted to the wall of a building on our right.  Is it video-recording us?  Since no warden is present, we bravely stroll on.

At the T-shaped jetty, we have an unimpeded view of the numerous ships nesting at Haikou Port Ferry Terminal wharf.  At the shallower end of the jetty are more than twenty small fishing boats lassoed together.  Except for one or two, most are unoccupied.  The day has ended, and the fishermen have gone home.  At the deeper end, two light-blue patrol boats bearing large black identification numbers 3315 and 177 on their front sides are docked on my left while another naval ship “China Rescue” bearing the identification “Nan Hai Jiu 201” in red is docked on my right.  As we are so close to Chinese naval boats, we become slightly alarmed.  Would we be arrested for taking photographs of those ships?  We hurry out.

 To save time, we stop the oncoming bus and alight at the next stop.  At five-thirty in the evening, the condition is cold and windy on Xiuying Beach.  But we gape at the sight, its sheer length.  This beach is a speck along Hainan’s coastline of one thousand five hundred kilometres, and the sea in front is a raindrop in its marine area of two million square kilometres.  I bend down and touch the sand.  Light-brown in colour, the grains are slightly coarse, and not as fine as the white sand of Bondi Beach.  The waves have not pulverized the shells of marine creatures into finer particles.  When the surf rushes in, I gingerly step forward and feel its surging salty water.  It is cool.

Here we are, staring at Qiongzhou Strait.  At twenty-six kilometres in width, it is an awesome trench of water, even though it is eight kilometres shorter than the English Channel at its narrowest between Dover and Calais.  I only recently learnt that this is the strait Mum and I had sailed through when I was four years of age, on our voyage to a new home in another island, the island of Singapore.  What is gliding beneath the surface of this strait at any time is something no one knows.  It may be a shark.  Or it may be a barracuda.  Centuries earlier, crocodiles were multiplying, feasting.

Few are courageous, or foolhardy, enough to swim across its choppy waves.  Yet in 2003, ten-year old Beijing schoolgirl Wang Yiyan set the Guinness World Record as the youngest swimmer to conquer it.  This remarkable feat was repeated in June 2005 by seven-year old Guo Siyu from Futian Free Trade Zone Primary School and her nine-year old cousin Hu Congtao from Shenzhen Primary School, thus setting a new record.  Starting from Hai’an in the morning, the intrepid pair debut at Haikou’s Meilisha Peninsula (Haidian Islet) after eight gruelling hours in 27.1 kilometres of cold brine.  

Later in the month, a cross-strait swimming contest with twenty-seven amateur participants was cancelled at the last minute after being declared illegal on safety reasons by the Xuwen County authorities.  "The Qiongzhou Strait is a very busy one; without the approval of the whole swimming plan and the arrangement of the local government, the journey would be very dangerous and would disturb the set sea-routes of the vessels."  The swimmers were scheduled to be accompanied by thirty hired boats.  Apparently, the organizers had sought the approval of the Haikou municipal authorities but forgotten the Xuwen County.  The two earlier swimmers were lucky to revel in their swimming opportunity because they had done so before the bureaucrats could act.

During my early adulthood, I occasionally swam across the man-made lagoon in Sentosa.  Each time, I was filled with trepidation.  Tiny fishes frequently nibbled my skin, sending me into a paroxysm of panic.  Was it a sea serpent instead?  The width of the lagoon was only fifty metres.  With recent marketing renovation, the sands forming the narrow sides of the lagoon were removed to permit the free flow of sea water.  The sand bar was renamed “Southernmost Point of Continental Asia”.

For half a kilometre, we slowly trudge on, admiring the clean and pretty reddish-brown walkway and the strip of parkland parallel to Binhai Avenue, touted as the Number One Beautiful Road in Asia.  We frequently nod at each other, heaping effusive praises for the provincial government.  Their great effort and expense in transforming this long, winding coast impress us.  The two rows of short coconut trees tell of their recent life.

This stretch of beach is some twenty kilometres long, and the charming coconut trees confer liberty on the national planners to dub the pathway as “The Long Avenue of Palm Tree Dreamland”.  Luxurious houses, hotels, and resort villas blend harmoniously with pockets of flowering plants and shrubs.  Hainan is truly blessed with beaches that extend for hundreds of kilometres and are dotted with scenic promontories that have fanciful names.  Apparently, a natural rock formation, a kilometre in length, resembles Mao’s features. Where is it?

 Road construction is still in progress along a long section of the Binhai Avenue near Changyi Road at seven in the evening.  I have nothing but admiration for the dedicated workers.  Hainan is changing very fast.  At the intersection, we join a crowd of people who have obviously just finished work for the day and are waiting for buses, even though no bus stop is in sight.

During our half-hour impatient lookout for the No. 41 bus, three No. 40 buses, which will pass our hotel, turn into Changyi Road.  We are too afraid to move from our place, fearing that we may miss the elusive No. 41.  In our frustration, we stop and catch a No. 28.  As soon as it turns right into Qiuhai Expressway, we get off to catch the No. 34 that deposits us at our hotel.  (I did not realise it then.  Bus No. 28 does go to Mingzhu Plaza.)

 

 
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