Rambling around my ancestral Hainan

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TRIP 1

2011 JANUARY
SPRING

 


Chapter 1:  The Forgotten Years
 

My slim body slumps snugly onto the soft, upright seat.  I stretch my legs.  But the legroom on Jetstar Airbus 320 is slightly narrower than that on Boeing 380A, my recent flight from Sydney to Singapore.  A little discomfort is the price I pay for the cheap fare.  It will be only three hours before we land, I console myself.  On my left is eighty-year old Mum.  Three months back in October 2010, she has visited Hainan Island.

I miss my wife.  Ever since our marriage twenty-six years ago, we have travelled together.  Her high fever has subsided but the bout of flu lingers.  And her body is aching.  She will be travelling five days later.  Two days ago, I had rushed to travel agency Target in People’s Park to change her flight as well as pay the necessary fees.  Their administration charge was $25, Jetstar’s flight amendment charge was $60, and the fare difference between the off-peak and peak seasons was an additional $5.

Mum is accompanying, to introduce us to her late brother’s family members: his wife, children, grand-children, and great grand-children.  Born in a remote village on the northeastern coast of Hainan in 1930, Chiang Heng Zee (张卿玉; Zhang Qing Yu) is the second child in her family of six.  There she would have remained to this very day if history had taken a different course.  And I might not be weaving this narrative.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Qing dynasty was expiring.  Founded by their disciplined Manchu forebears from the cold northeastern homeland two and a half centuries earlier, successive imperial courts and ruling elites irresistibly succumbed to creeping corruption and malaise, thus enfeebling the “Pure” empire and indirectly facilitating their country’s subjection to foreign economic exploitation.  Seething hatred, bottled up for so long, finally stirred the nationalistic spirit of the long-suffering people, sparking the unsuccessful Boxer Rebellion in 1900.  Ambitious military generals vigorously endeavoured to enlarge their spatial domains.  A brief period of internal turmoil followed, mirroring the external global tensions that preceded the 1914 First World War.  Chinese territorial unity was threatened.

One man sought to make a difference before the ensuing chaos.  He sought to overthrow the tainted monarchical political system.  He sought to realise a China united and committed to the people’s welfare.  Born in 1866 in the Xiangshan county (now Zhongshan City) of Guangdong Province, Sun Yat-sen had endured the humiliation of the unequal treaties imposed by the militarily superior invaders on his defeated country after the 1839-42 and 1856-60 Opium Wars and the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895.  Disillusioned by contemporary reformists’ unsuccessful attempts at achieving piecemeal socio-economic changes, the medical doctor formed the United League in 1905 with like-minded revolutionaries and travelled abroad to solicit funds to promote his radical republican cause.

Covertly supporting him was a Hainanese from Wenchang.  Han Jiao Zhun is better known to the world as Charlie Soong.  To the great anticipation and trepidation of the downtrodden Chinese, 1910 witnessed a profound political revolution, a series of unsuccessful uprisings against the Qing rulers.  In failures, success emerges like a soaring phoenix.  Sun’s charisma and idealism attracted a young teenager from Wenchang to Guangzhou, a Chen Ming Tang (later nicknamed in Cantonese as Chan Chak; pinyin: Chen Ce).

On the first of January 1912, forty-five year old Sun, who had been recently elected as provisional president by provincial leaders, solemnly proclaimed the birth of the Republic of China.  Less than three months later, he magnanimously relinquished the leadership to Yuan Shikai, the northern general who had successfully extracted the abdication of their Manchu emperor.  Skilfully veiled, the warlord’s lust was the establishment of another empire, not a republic.  In December 1915, the Hongxian (Constitutional Abundance) dynasty was odiously foisted upon the bewildered people.  Fortunately, his stillborn tyranny lasted only three months.  Another three months later, the budding oppressor died at the age of fifty-six from renal dysfunction.

Jostling to fill the political void were three groups: the resurgent warlords in several provinces, the Kuomintang (“Guomindang”; Chinese Nationalist Party) formed by Sun in 1912 and based in Guangzhou in the south, and the Chinese Communist Party formed in 1921 and based in Shanghai in the north.  With funds generously donated by overseas sympathisers, Sun enjoyed an initial advantage.  Upon his death in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek assumed the mantle.  The following year, the latter’s forces marched north to Shanghai, vanquishing warlords along the path.  In 1927, Shanghai fell to the Communists, who had also trounced the local gang leaders.  Despite a prior agreement, Chiang massacred the Communists when he was welcomed into the city.

While the rest of the world was groaning in depression and watching with anxiety the military rise of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler in Europe after the first modern war fought on western soil from mid-1914 to November 1918, Mao Zedong and his nascent Communist Party were engaged in relentless battles against Chiang’s predominant Kuomintang (KMT) for control over China.  During the anarchical interregnum from 1927 to 1945, many Communists fled, some to the relative safety of Hainan Island.  But the steady stream of disheartening news on mainland China continued to alarm the Hainanese.  From the small number of emigrants during the Ming dynasty, an annual ten to twenty thousand departed between 1884 and 1898.  In 1927, an unprecedented forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-four left.

Those tumultuous events of the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties shaped the future of the Zhang family and numerous others living in the southern provinces of China.  They reached the painful decision of leaving their kin and kith to seek employment and a permanent home for their immediate members in Southeast Asia.  Born around 1890, maternal grandfather Zhang Yun Zhou (张运周) was one of those intrepid villagers who ventured south in the early nineteen-twenties.  He was soon followed by his younger brother Yun Jing (运经).  In colonial Malaya, his name, verbalised in Hainanese, was transliterated by the custom-and-immigration officer as “Chong Joon Chiew”.  Having established himself, he sent for his only child.  Fifteen-year old Zhang Jia Chun (张家春 or “Chong Kia Joon” in Hainanese) was accompanied by a courier to Kuala Lumpur in 1928.  Prudent living permitted diligent grandfather Yun Zhou to return occasionally to Hainan to visit his parents and wife.  Mum and her younger brother were born.

With mainland China wrecked by internal schism and bloodshed, opportunistic Japan, itself a victim of foreign rapacity less than a century earlier, invaded Manchuria in September 1931.  Easily capturing the territory five months later, its forces then cautiously tested the severely disunited Chinese with minor skirmishes over the next six years.  By July 1937, when Europe was mired in internecine war and disarray, they unexpectedly advanced and overran Beijing and Shanghai.  Fright triggered flight.  A total of seventy-seven thousand Hainanese fled Hainan Island in 1936 and 1937.  Moving south, the unhindered modernised Japanese army effortlessly seized Guangzhou (Canton) a year later.

Initially, the conquerors had no serious design on Hainan because of the 1897 French-Qing Agreement and 1907 French-Japanese Agreement which, explicitly or implicitly, recognized the strategic island as a French protectorate.  Indeed in June 1938 the Japanese foreign minister had publicly announced that Hainan would not be invaded, although his declaration was overturned a few days later.  Against local subconscious hopes for peace, their regimented naval convoys landed in Haikou the following February, overrunning the port, Qiongshan district, and Ding’an within a single day.  After consolidating their gains, they gradually marched inland to capture Wenchang, Qinglan Port, and Qionghai.  For six years, despite resistance from local guerrilla fighters, one of whom was Feng Baiju, they freely expropriated the rich human and natural resources to accelerate their territorial expansion.  

Sailing southwards from Samah (now Sanya) Harbour in December 1941 under the command of Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, their nineteen transport ships, escorted by light cruisers and destroyers, were reinforced midway with troops from Indochina.  A few days later, more than five thousand of them successfully beached at Kota Bahru on the northeastern shore of Malaya to begin their unstoppable drive over the peninsula and into Singapore Island, the “impregnable” British fortress in the Far East.  With its colonial master in Britain focussed on confronting Nazi Germany’s military might, a virtually defenceless Singapore was easily subjugated in February 1942.

Mum was only nine years old and her younger brother was about two when Japanese soldiers appeared.  Naturally, these unwelcomed foreigners were greeted with sporadic armed resistance, however ineffective, during their six-year occupation.  They were ruthless, executing swift justice – or, rather, injustice – on uncooperative residents deemed guilty of perpetrating resistance.  For the first six months, Mum lived a life of misery and uncertainty, not knowing their intention.  Would she be killed?  Would she be molested?  Sharing her vexations, her kin in the adjoining house, a Zhang Jia Guang (张家广), led her and his family to quiver among the thick mangroves two kilometres south of their Xiayang Village.  They only sneaked back at night to sleep before repeating the grim routine the following dawn.

Work was hard to come by.  The yields of fields and fruits of farms were prey to the interlopers, who stole an estimated quarter of a million water buffaloes.   Resisting villages were looted and then burnt down, and their inhabitants killed or raped.  When they were finally assured of their personal safety, Mum and her fellow villagers worked as unskilled labourers in the military administration, building roads and offices in their rural town of Huiwen for more than one and a half years.  To supplement their diet, they collected the clams and other shellfish sporadically flourishing in the sandbanks at the mouth of the river that runs through their coastal town.  When she was about twelve years old, Mum nearly drowned in the swirling currents when the primitive boat, overladen with twenty eager persons, leaked.

Shortly thereafter, her relatively serene world crumbled when her mum and younger brother left with twenty or thirty other villagers on a sailboat for Taiwan.  Their ultimate destination was Nanyang (“South Seas”, that is, Southeast Asia), via Hong Kong.  Being a female, teenage Mum remained with her paternal grandparents.  Meanwhile, life in Malaya too was not blissful for her father and elder brother.  Daily, they feared indiscriminate detention by the Japanese commanders.  Mum’s youngest brother was born in Malaya after the fleeing members were reunited with their loved ones.

Two years after the end of the 1945 Pacific War, maternal grandmother and her eldest son returned to Hainan to settle some unfinished family matters.  One was the traditionally arranged marriage of Mum.  She was eighteen years old.  Having completed the chores after two months, maternal grandmother returned to Kuala Lumpur, the capital also of the subsequently enlarged Malaysian federation.

Fortunately or unfortunately for his descendants, Mum’s older brother made the fateful decision of remaining in Hainan.  He married a beautiful, slender young girl, who is seventeen years his junior.  From a wealthy family, Tao Ai Qing (陶爱卿; Hainanese: Hao Ai Heng) bore him three sons.  Until his demise seventeen years ago, they raised their children in his ancestral village southeast of Wenchang town.

The human tragedies and sufferings in China resulting from the Japanese invasion and civil war finally saw a reprieve with the victory of the Red Army in 1949.

As plump Mum struggles to secure comfort in her seat, my mixed feelings surface, feelings of excitement tinged with apprehension.  For a year, I have been spinning stories to my wife about the interesting places that we could visit on the island.  Sanya was the venue for the Miss World contests for the fifth time in 2010, the organizers evidently overwhelmed by some special features of that city.  What are they?  Hainan has its own species of deer.  Perhaps we could see and even touch them?  And nestling high up in misty Wuzhishan are picturesque and unique Li or Miao thatched homes among the pristine forest trees.  What are they like?  Huge extinct craters and caverns in the Haikou volcanic park are not far from the city.  Won’t it be exciting to go on an exploration?

After all my hymns in praise, will Jo’s heightened expectation be fulfilled?  Or will she be left bitterly disappointed?  What will I feel when we slowly crisscross the land that I have left many decades ago?  My son, who is turning twenty, will not be there to share our emotions.  The bright lights of Thailand attract him and his Australian friend.

Jetstar Airbus 320 is small.  On either side of the aisle are thirty rows, each with three seats.  Amazingly, the plane is about ninety-five percent full.  Only ten or less empty seats are scattered among the one hundred and seventy or so passengers.  As the young flight steward readily assists in lifting heavy cabin bags to overhead compartments, five charming stewardesses are patrolling the aisle, adjusting them when necessary and enquiring if further assistance is needed.  The nimble ladies wear dark uniforms with orange borders.  One looks like a Malay.  Three Caucasian passengers are on board.  One seems to be a Spaniard or Argentinean; he sits alone.  My mind ponders.  What are they doing in Hainan?  Are they businessmen?  Or are they tourists?

Three hours earlier, the sparkling clean NTUC taxi took forty-five minutes to whisk us from my parents’ flat in Serangoon North Avenue 1 to Changi Airport.  The fare was $14.  At Terminal 1, the thirty or so eager passengers patiently guided their bags and luggage into two orderly queues at their check-in counters.  Their formalities done, they moved to the waiting area, where three pilots were chatting.  Two are Europeans.  With nothing else to do, I started counting silently.   At 1.15 pm: fifty passengers.

More trickled in over the following fifteen minutes.   The crowd on that day, a school day, surprised me.  A young couple sturdily grasped the pram, which safely held their infant.  An elderly lady in her early fifties was carrying her young granddaughter.  She is dark, like an ethnic minority from Hainan.  Her Hainanese accent is sharper.  I could not understand some of her words.  Her son and daughter-in-law would be joining her in Haikou during the later part of the month for the Chinese New Year celebration, she said.  She had stayed with them in Singapore for more than a month.

Other faces appeared familiar.  Their owners were mainly adults and the elderly.  Were they now free to roam because their children or grandchildren had just started their school term and were under the care of attentive Filipino maids?  The chatter too was familiar.  They were conversing in Hainanese.  My mother-tongue.  A tingle of transcending bond ran eerily through my vein.  Even though I do not know them, we are kin, with a common root.   Hainan Island.  Some passengers, I suspect, have lost their knowledge of the language, conversing so articulately in English.

At 1.45 pm the plane was not even ready for its scheduled departure.  But when the announcement finally came, we sluggishly strode our way across the aerobridge and into the aircraft.  I was glad we had not booked a Tiger Air flight because at Terminal 3 all passengers scrambled up mobile ladders like in the old days, heaving their overweight cabin bags.  Located in a less grandiose section of the renowned international airport, that terminal has been catering since 2006 to regional airlines like Silkair and Tiger Air and for budget travellers heading to less populated destinations.

My sensory perception seems sharper.  The plane slowly moves away from the tarmac.  On my left is the forest and on my right are buildings.  At the sign “4000 m”, it turns and takes off, rocking and shaking as if it has encountered potholes.  Is that usual?  I am slightly alarmed.  It is 2.15 pm.  With the air-conditioning system in full blast, I am feeling cold.  The Changi Airport Control Tower diminishes in size; many SIA planes are parked near it.  As the jet climbs, I recognize Johor Strait on my left.  I am in Seat 7B.

Within a few minutes, we are floating among the clouds.  Airbus A320 is noisy, the grinding of its engine contrasting with the silence of SIA Airbus A380 from Sydney to Singapore.  After the seatbelt sign has been switched off, the sales pitch in English and Mandarin for duty-free items blitzes the airwaves.  But it is indistinct.  Two ladies and a gentleman unbuckle their seatbelts and head for the amenity room.

Higher up in the stratosphere, the ride is smooth.  The noise changes; it echoes like the gushing of wind through the plane.  The humming of the engine is suppressed.  No air turbulence disturbs the crew or passengers.  A stewardess hands out the Immigration Form.  It is simple.  No information is requested on the length of stay, previous or next destination, criminal convictions, contagious diseases, and whether one is carrying drugs, unlike the Custom Declaration Form, which all passengers, including Australians, are required to fill for Australian airport quarantine control.  The duration of the flight is three hours and the temperature on arrival is twenty-seven degrees Celsius, the pilot announces.

After an hour, the steward and stewardesses push the food trolley along the aisle.  The menu is brightly coloured, the dishes tempting.  The Hainanese Chicken Rice set has four generous cuts of chicken.  At $10, it is inexpensive.  Adding another $5, I also get a drink of my choice and a dessert.  I glance at my watch.  3.20 pm.  I sit back, relax, and reflect.

Lost memories of early childhood
 
I was born in Hainan Island.  With an area of 33,920 square kilometres, the second largest island of China is only slightly smaller than 35,980 square-kilometre Taiwan, in fact, less than six percent smaller.  At half the size of Tasmania Island (62,400 square kilometres), it is slightly larger than Vancouver Island (32,134 square kilometres) and the state of Belgium (30,528 square kilometres).  Until 1988, Hainan Island and its surrounding islets constituted a county within Guangdong Province.  With China’s rapid economic liberalization and globalisation, its strategic location nudged the central government towards its political enhancement.  The county became a separate province as well as a Special Economic Zone.

Hainan Province takes its name from the largest island.  Its capital is Haikou, which now exercises jurisdiction over two hundred surrounding and far-flung islets, including Xisha (literally, West Sands, or Paracel Islands), Nansha (literally, South Sands, or Spratly Islands), and Zhongsha (literally, Central Sands, or Macclesfield Bank).  The province is not an ordinary Special Economic Zone like Shenzhen on the northern border of Hong Kong.  It is, more importantly, a “special” Special Economic Zone.  The whole province itself, and not just a district or region, is a Special Economic Zone.  Excluding the four municipalities, five autonomous regions, and two special administrative regions, Hainan Province is the smallest of the twenty-three provinces of China.  And it is also the most southern region.

“Hainan Dao” (海南岛) literally means “Sea South Island” or, more elegantly, “South Sea Island”.  To emperors sitting on their thrones in the northern capitals of China - Beijing (“Northern Capital”), Hangzhou (“Boat Land”), Kaifeng (“Opening Up New Territory”), Luoyang (“North Side of Luo [River]”), Nanjing (Southern Capital”), or Xi’an (“Western Peace”; later renamed as Chang’an, or “Perpetual Peace”) - over the last two millennia, the description was apt.  The island lies to their south, beyond the sea.  So far from the ancient Chinese capital, whether Xi’an, Luoyang, Beijing, or even Nanjing, it once was China’s Siberia and gulag!

Authors often use the term “Hainan” loosely to refer to the main island itself and occasionally to the political unit, Hainan Province.  And that is how I shall use it, which makes for easier reading.

My home is not in Hainan.  My home is in Sydney.  The latter is the most beautiful city in Australia.  It is a city where tourists flock to gawk at the Opera House and frolic at Bondi Beach.  That phrase “the most beautiful city” reveals my bias and sentiment - after eighteen years of uninterrupted habitation.  Friends from Melbourne frequently tease with an identical remark about their city, adding Sydney is crowded, its roads narrow, and the morning and evening traffic frequently caught up in snarls.  Yes, I must admit, Melbournian streets are spotlessly clean, and their long and winding coastline is fabulously scenic.  Who can forget the miles of spectacular cliffs along Great Ocean Road and the weather-worn Twelve Apostles?

I was only a young kid of four when Mum and I disembarked at the port in Singapore - on the last day of August 1953, according to a list of significant dates recorded by me when I was in my teens.  How I derived that specific date was lost to me in the passage of time.  I remember boarding a big boat crammed with people.  In my juvenile imagination, it was a sailing junk.  A steamship, Mum later explained when I asked her a couple of years ago.  Was it really crowded?  Had I been on that boat for five days or so?  Mum could not even remember.  That would have been the number of days a steamship took to sail from Haikou to Singapore.  What were the living conditions on that floating platform?

“What are the names of our ancestral villages?”  I repeatedly probed Mum.
In our Hainanese dialect, she uttered, “Ow Leah Swee” and “A Yeo Swee”.
“What is the name of the nearest town?”
“Boon Sio.”

They were meaningless to me because I did not know their Mandarin equivalent and hence I could not pinpoint them on the Google map.  Fruitlessly inferring from the pronunciation “Ow Leah”, I suspected Jia Lai (加来) Village in Lin’gao County as my ancestral village.

“How far are they from Haikou?”
“About an hour by car.”

That village is about an hour’s drive southwest of Haikou downtown.  I showed her a map of Hainan.

“Did the car go east, south, or west?”

She stared at it, and appeared confused.  I only recently learnt from my maternal niece the Mandarin names of our ancestral villages, and I only recently learnt from Mum that we had sailed through Qiongzhou Strait on Hainan’s west coast from Haikou even though a port was located near our village on the east coast.  Qinglan Port was the escape route for thousands of villagers fleeing the 1939 Japanese invasion.  It remains a major fishing port.

Born in Hainan before the end of the nineteenth century, paternal great-granddad Feng Yun Ke (冯运科) went to Singapore at the start of the new century.  There he worked as a clerk in a firm at Shenton Way for the princely salary of $15 per month.  He regularly returned to Hainan to visit his wife who, suffering from vertigo, was unable to travel too far.  Raised there, their four sons - Zhen Jia (振佳), Zhen Ji (振起), Zhen Xing (振兴), and Zhen Dian (振典) - migrated to Singapore at different times.  Except for my granddad Zhen Ji, they were accompanied by their wives.  Great-granddad later returned to Hainan and remained with his wife, both passing on in 1956.

Granddad Feng Zhen Ji was working in North Vietnam during the nineteen-thirties when he died under mysterious circumstances and his body was buried in a grave, the location of which remains undiscovered.  A young boy, my father came under the guardianship of his eldest uncle, Zhen Jia.  Dad had his primary education in English but his education was interrupted by World War II.  When it ended three years later, he grabbed the first available job.  The British masters were restoring the Singapore administration disrupted during their ignominious rout.

Dad returned to Hainan to marry Mum as traditionally arranged by their parents.  Their families had lived about three kilometres apart, the Feng (simplified Chinese: 冯; traditional: 馮) or “Pang” (in Hainanese dialect) in Houlingcun and the Zhang in Xiayangcun.  The three Chinese characters 厚嶺村 (Hou Ling Cun) on the village signboard may be literally translated as “Thick Mountain Range Village” or, more elegantly, as “Profound Mountain Range Village” while those in “Xia Yang Cun” (下洋村) may be literally translated as “Below Ocean Village” or, more elegantly, as “Village before the Ocean”.

Confusingly for me, the Chinese character for “hou” inscribed by the Houling villagers differs from that given on Google Map, namely, 后, which, my Oxford Chinese-English Mini Dictionary tells me, means “behind”.  Is there a mountain range behind my village?  I later learn that, although “hou” (后) acquires its current meaning under the 1949 language reform, its earlier referent was “sovereign”.  Thus, “Houling Village” may actually have a refined connotation: my ancestral village may be “Sovereign’s Mountain Range Village”.  Google Map, I suspect, retains the correct original Chinese character, although not its previous sophisticated meaning.

Thanks to the detailed maps easily accessible on the internet, I am able to calculate these approximate distances: Houling Village lies sixteen kilometres south of Wenchang town; Fengjiawan (冯家湾; Feng’s Clan Bay) lies seven kilometres south of Houling Village; and Qinglan Port lies fourteen kilometres northeast of Houling Village.  

Only flashes of solitary scenes of Houling Village nurtured me through my early years in Singapore.  They were tantalising glimpses.  I was crawling under my grandfather’s wooden chair, and the next vision I recapture was a scolding.  My misadventure caused a ruckus for reasons unknown to me.  I caught a cicada from a tree in our back yard – or was it the front yard – and tied a string to its leg.  What occurred next?  I cannot remember.  I was walking behind Mum along a wide, dusty, reddish-brown untarred country track, which was elevated.  Were there paddy fields on my left?  Or just a barren patch of land?

Six years of primary education in Pasir Panjang Primary School flew by, as the idiom goes, with a twinkling of an eye.  They were years wasted in catching male fighting spiders, members of the Salticidae family (scientific name: Thiania bhamoensis Thorell 1887 Fighting Spider), living among the overlapping aromatic leaves of Pandan (Screwpine) plants cultivated in a tapioca plantation at the far edge of my school field.  Daily, we enthusiastically shared anecdotes on means to enhance their strength.  To produce champion fighters, two classmates dote on their adoring pets with the blood-ridden bugs lurking in the cracks and joints of our wooden chairs.

My potential winner, however, stubbornly refused to sink its fangs into the bloated victims I offered, despite the fact that I had - with a cruel streak - deprived it of its usual food for a few days.  The coward lost a couple of fights.  And I lost a couple of bets!  Each loss was costly - a five-cent stone marble.  That was one-quarter of my pocket money for recess refreshment.  I envied the two classmates who could magically coax their protégés into a stinking feast and transform them into gargantuan warriors.

To be honest, I must not conceal the joy of scooping up with a crude home-made net, or with my bare hands, numerous hardy guppies merrily canoodling in the stagnant drain near my school.  The females were plain and pale while the males were smaller and colourful.  In an empty peanut bottle filled with clean tap water, a single pregnant female eventually bore many guppies.  Although I had generously supplied them with ample bits of bread, the young ones vanished daily.  The naughty house gecko had snatched them, I hissed.  As prevention, I covered the bottle with a perforated page of our discarded newspaper.  When the solution failed, it dawned upon me that the mother was carnivorous.  I carefully separated her from her off-springs.  And they thrived, incestuously reproducing when they came of age.  I was perplexed when I discovered with much happiness some swordtail guppies when none of the parent guppies was a swordtail.  Where did they come from?  I quietly asked myself.

Yes, that rose or wax apple (Syzygium) tree in the compound of a bungalow along the narrow Pepys Road [sic. Yew Siang Road] leading to the school gate.  Bless the owners.  I have fond memories of that tree.  The overhanging branches.  The fresh smell of the little flowers drifting slowly down on my head...  An accurate throw of a fallen broken branch brought a few luscious fruits onto the wayside.  I eagerly rushed to pick them up.  Gently, I wiped their glossy skins against the side of my shorts to remove the visible girt.  The sweetness of the porous flesh remains with me till this very day.  Truly, there are some things we cherish even though they are free.

Mandarin lesson was optional.  A few friends and I left the classroom to rejoice in an hour of games and fun.  If it was not my favourite table-tennis, it was football or badminton.  That was better than the smack on the palm dished out by the stern-looking middle-aged language teacher with her wooden ruler.  How could my brain remember the strange sound when 我 (wo; I) is pronounced as “War” and 你 (ni; You) as “Knee”?  I was thoroughly mystified.  Neither of my parents is Mandarin-literate.  In my pocket was a neatly-folded sheet of paper in which I had transliterated Mandarin characters into English.  But it was of no help since Mandarin characters have four tones.  My deepest regret was to come later when I searched for my lost heritage.

They frequently teased me, yelling “Chinaman, Chinaman”, after my Form (Year) Five teacher had rhetorically exclaimed during the annual profile update for the new class register, “So you were born in China?”

“Ohh ... China”, they gasped in astonishment.

I had a sinking feeling that I was an alien from outer space.  Those Singaporeans!  After the history lessons on the Mongol invasion of China, they did not cease making fun of me again.  “Kublai Khan!  Kublai Khan!”

When I closely scrutinised the portrait of the great emperor in my textbook during the privacy of my home, I detected a slight resemblance between us.  His face is round; he is plump.  I secretly harboured the thought that I would be as famous as him ... one day.

My siblings - two brothers and a sister - came along, and the four years in a nondescript secondary school went by, and I was none the wiser.  Pre-class time at the adjacent Pasir Panjang Beach was most memorable.  The refreshing unhurried coastal walk, the cool salty breeze, the regular lisping waves, and the occasional sandpipers: these were my reassuring companions.  Twenty minutes later, some schoolmates interrupted my solitary musing.  Sitting on the temple bench, they gambled, betting away their tea-break money.  A few fights erupted.  None was deadly, just a few bruises and injured egos.  I disliked formal education.  I was restless.  In other words, my grades led me nowhere.  I was in a quest for the “meaning” of my life.

Growing up in Singapore and lost heritage
 

Religion is the opium of the people, nineteenth-century political philosopher Karl Marx once said.  Whether it is true or false, it did offer psychological succour to me.  Life was a mystery to me.  It still is.  Religion consumed my waking hours.  Voluntary evangelism with American missionary Albert Leroy Harbin and local understudy Henry Kong as well as Bible studies took higher priority.  Secular studies became a casualty.  My grades from the “A-level” (pre-university) examinations as a private candidate were marginally sufficient to evoke an initial, conceivably sympathy offer to matriculate into University of Singapore’s Law Faculty.

Divine intervention might be at work: I received a last-minute blessing, a change to my first choice, the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty.  With much gratitude, I went down on my knees.  I was reading the subjects that were captivating – Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology.  St. Thomas Aquinas, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Confucius, and Lao Zi were sages who widened my vista, as I voraciously devoured their great works.  Fortunately enough, I graduated with a reasonable degree, an Upper Second Class Honours Degree in Philosophy.

Unfortunately, I was inducted into the army to fulfil the obligatory National Service imposed upon those male citizens born in and after 1949.  The two and a half years were dreadful, even though I had an easier time after I had concluded my six-month Officer Cadet course, almost last in the class.  I accumulated the most “takes” - penalties - during the course.  “Take One” for not having a shining pair of boots.  “Take One” for the “elephant” (an exaggeration for a speck of dirt) in my AR-15 rifle barrel.   “Take One” for the furtive sip of water from the water bottle after a long run.

“Do you know you can die doing that?”  The platoon trainer bellowed.  

“Take One” is short for “Take one weekend guard duty”.  During my gruelling six months, eight precious weekends were “burnt”, performing guard duties when others were homeward bound to party.  The course instructors “targeted” me.  That was my paranoiac belief.  Frankly, I was responsible for my own predicament.

For one assessment, I delivered, as assigned, a talk on “Leadership and Esprit de Corps”.  The previous week, an instructor had warned us before the commencement of a military exercise, “When you all assault Pengkang Hill, don’t you ever pluck the farmer’s rambutans.”  But he did just that.  We were watching with envy as he sampled the delicious fruits.  The day finally arrived.  To be a good leader, I quietly said, one should do what one preaches, which would promote “esprit de corps” among the team members.  For example, I elaborated, if a leader tells us not to pluck rambutans whilst we are charging up Pengkang Hill, he himself should not do so.  Everyone burst out in laughter.

The assessing company captain was baffled by the contrast, the solemnity and tone of my delivery and the spontaneous class laughter.  Obviously, he investigated.  I was hauled up to the office the following day.  Under the three company instructors’ grilling, I was trying to suppress my mawkish smile.

“Hee How!  You look serious; we thought you are a serious person but we didn’t know that you are really a clown!!”  One of them remarked.

“Sorry, sir.”

Over the following decade and a half, I alternated between working in statutory boards and studying for higher degrees, finally reaping a doctorate from Monash University.  Thanks to the National University of Singapore and Australian Government I savoured my four years in Victoria under the University Senior Tutorship Scheme and Australian Commonwealth Postgraduate Scholarship.  As Senior Tutor, I was paid a salary; as scholar, I was given a living allowance and free higher education.

“You are actually the richest postgraduate student in the Monash Philosophy Department,” PhD supervisor Professor Ten Chin Liew quipped.  Ten was well-noted for his Mill on Liberty and Crime, Guilt, and Punishment.  (He subsequently published three more books.)

During those interesting times, a wife entered into my life, introduced earlier by her former college classmate Anita Low, my tutorial student when I was a part-time tutor writing my Master of Arts thesis.  Josephine is a granddaughter of the late Lau Pak Khuan (刘伯羣; 1894-1971) through the second of his three wives.  Jo’s mother is the only child of Chan Siew Kum.  A founder member of the Malaysian Chinese Association in 1949 and recipient of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for post-war public service, the Ipoh mining magnate resigned from the political party when he failed in London in 1956 to secure equal democratic rights for Malayan Chinese from the post-war British government.  His children like Jerome Lau Kwi Hin and grandchildren like Patrick Lau Choon Sam are some of the nicest people I have ever met.

Jo and I delighted in the splendour of Victoria’s lofty Dandenong Ranges, spacious coastline of Great Ocean Road, fascinating gold mines of Ballarat, and little Fairy Penguins of Phillip Island.  The swaying tulips in full bloom, the multi-coloured lorikeets, the sleepy koalas, and even the pock-marked hills of Hanging Rocks rejuvenated our souls.

After my completion of five-year service under the scholarship grant terms as a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, we migrated to Australia, where we are now residing.  The memorable days of my teaching career were over.  But the friendship with many colleagues and former students remains through the subsequent decades.  Fame is transient but friendship is not.  I know because I have had, nostalgically, my five-minute - literally - of fame, standing before an audience of four hundred PAP members and guests in the Development Bank of Singapore auditorium in January 1980.

During the debate-and-quiz session organized by the PAP City East Committee as part of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the People’s Action Party, I was a member of one debating team (Straits Times, 1980 January 7: “Needed: New generation of voters who can respond”).  S. Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs, was the guest-of-honour, who delivered the welcoming speech.  Among the other guests were Goh Chok Tong (Minister for Trade and Industry) and Teh Cheang Wan (Minister for National Development).  A. Rahim Ishak (Senior Minister of State, Foreign Affairs) chaired the three-member judging panel.  The motion: “Singapore’s new breed of leaders now being groomed will not be able to cope with the Republic’s future crises because they have so far not been exposed to any real challenge or leadership test”.  Opposing the motion, our four-person team won the tussle against the other team.

Slightly more than a year later, I was in the team of four Arts and Social Sciences lecturers during a light-hearted debate called by the Arts Club at Kent Ridge (Straits Times, 1981 August 26: “All winners in the verbal thrusts and parry”).  Cheered on by four hundred National University of Singapore fellow students, the student team defended the motion: “Student indifference to social and political issues is a reflection of their lecturers’ indifference”.

In addition to regular trips to Singapore to meet our relatives and friends, Jo and I have travelled to England, Fiji, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Sabah.  But not China.  Not Hainan.  Language was a problem.  In fact, it was the major problem.  Yes, we could have participated in an organized tour.  But that would have robbed us of the immeasurable joys of a true “holiday”.  We were not inclined towards a strict programme, waking up at early hours, say six or seven in the morning, to the clarion call of a guide.  We had no desire to be rushed from site to site.  That did not appeal.  Our preference is a leisurely stroll into an unexpected shop to ferret out a rare bargain, a piece of cheap clothing or unique jewellery.  We wish to taste the vendor’s food from his roadside stall.

 
Seeking roots in exceptional opportunity
 

In an unwitting way we had prepared ourselves for a holiday in Hainan Island.  As avid fans of Chinese martial art movies and television serials, we had consciously selected and retained some Mandarin vocabulary along the way.  We are now at ease with people conversing in Mandarin, comprehending ten or twenty percent of the content, enough - we believe - to get by for a short China visit.  Coincidentally, during our trip to Singapore at the end of 2007, we met - for the first time - my maternal niece, the granddaughter of Mum’s older brother.

Living in the capital of Hainan, Zhang Cai Hong (张彩虹) came to visit her cousin, another maternal niece, who had recently married a Singaporean.  Showing the pretty young lady in her twenties around the tourist sites, and getting acquainted with her and hearing her stories, was a pleasure.  The familial connection was established, prompting this exploratory trip to Hainan.  That she may answer any unpredictable cry for assistance is also a comforting thought.  Indeed, she and her family are more than helpful.

By four in the afternoon, the plane is over Hainan’s southern coast.  The sky is blue, without clouds.  The valleys and mountain ranges are clearly demarcated.  Settlements are few.  Half an hour later, passing fogs swiftly obscure my vision.  As it descends, the plane vibrates.  My heart is in my mouth.  Entering more fogs, it cruises steadily for about five or ten minutes.  The baby is crying incessantly.  Suddenly, water splashes belt the windows.  It is raining outside.  The sky is dark.  I am seating just in front of the left engine.  It is now invisible.  I am anticipating a dry and sunny welcome.  This is not what I have expected.  The stewardess reminds us to keep our seats upright.       

Soon a town materialises.  Then a river.  And many houses.   Skilfully, and to my great relief, the pilot gently lands us on the scheduled time: 5.15 pm.  Five “Deer Air” planes with red tails and yellow stripes are docked at the tarmac.  These jets, I later learn, belong to a subsidiary of Hainan Airlines.  The flat and long white terminal is about fifty metres in height.  In a neat row on its roof are five distinctive pyramid-like structures with “steps”, suggesting that they are airport administrative offices shaded under sun louvres.  In front of them, a network of steel pipes clasps two huge Mandarin characters in red - 海口 - and similarly coloured bold letters: HAIKOU.  Two similar pyramid-like structures are on the far right.  Attached at regular intervals to the terminal are six or seven aerobridges, ready for incoming planes and passengers.

Ironically, the largest airport on the island is quiet.  Together with second-largest Sanya Fenghuang (Phoenix) Airport in the south, Hainan Meilan International Airport currently caters to domestic and regional airlines from Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and even Siberia.  In operation since May 1999, it is also one of ten largest airports in China with a capacity of processing nine million passengers.  In 2005, seven million passengers passed through its gate.  Five years later, the number reached almost 8.8 million.

Only one other plane has landed before us.  Some sixty or seventy passengers are milling anxiously around the carousel.  Within half an hour, bags, boxes, and luggage of all sizes and shapes emerge.  Everyone pushes ahead.  Those standing behind the front row lean forward and stretch their necks.  After collecting our suitcases and boxes of biscuits and “Three-in-One” coffee sachets, Mum and I head for the Custom-and-Immigration booths.

Slowly manoeuvring her small magnifying scope over the photograph and surrounding details on my Australian passport, the lady sitting behind the checkpoint counter is alert for indications of illegal alteration.  Finding none, she gazes at me suspiciously.  She throws a question which I conjecture concerns the year or town of my birth.  In my limited pidgin Mandarin, I hastily explain my origin in Hainan in 1949.  And gesturing to the lady in front, I volunteer: she is my mother, who took me at the age of four to Singapore where I studied and worked.  Satisfied when I add my migration to Australia during adulthood, she lets me through.  My first hurdle is cleared.  I am relieved.  Welcome to Hainan.  The last thing I want is to be deported even before I step on Hainan soil.  My journey now begins.  I am excited.

2 January 2011 is historic.  I am going back to the land I have not seen for over five decades.  An indescribable sensation overcomes me.  A euphoria.  It is like I am coming home.  Yet a nagging fear surfaces, a fear that the familiar feeling would be subsequently dashed when my expectations go unmet.  I expect a warm welcome, the embracing arms of a parent for her long-lost child.  This must be the same expectation in the souls of thousands of overseas returnees.  Pre-visit preparation hitches pale, and misgivings fade away.

As an Australian citizen, I am required to apply for my three-week tourist visa in advance.  This I did in Singapore.  The requirement of a return flight ticket from Singapore to Hainan was misinterpreted by me as a requirement of evidencing my Sydney-Singapore return flight ticket.  Fruitlessly producing that ticket to the Visa Processing Centre in Raffles Place one day, and then rushing to People’s Park the following day to book a Singapore-Haikou return ticket, dampened my spirit.  Singaporeans are fortunate, being exempted from visa application if their stay is less than fifteen days.  Their passports will be stamped with a tourist visa on arrival in Hainan.

Cai Hong and her father are waiting.  Near them, about a hundred visitors, hosts, and relatives are mingling and talking.  The gentle swish of clean, unpolluted air is refreshing.  Cai Hong is glad to see us; she happily welcomes me.  I am also glad to see her again.  She introduces me to her father, a decently attired man of about my height.  Enthusiastically, we shake hands.

Guo Tai (Hainanese pronunciation: Kok Hai) was not yet born when I left Haikou in 1953.  He is the youngest of Uncle Jia Chun’s three children.  Born after the Second World War, Guo Tai and his two brothers were unfortunately deprived of a continuous formal education during the chaotic, formative period of the People’s Republic.  Besides studying, they toiled in their parents’ paddy field and pepper-and-vegetable farm neighbouring their family home, a walled compound enclosing two houses.  Now a car-repair mechanic, Third Cousin lives in Haikou with his wife and son.  Fa Gao is working for a manufacturing company in Guangzhou after recently completing his secondary education.  Living near them and married to a businessman, Cai Hong has a two-year-old daughter.  She works for China Mobile, one of the major Chinese telecommunication companies.

Three taxi drivers approach, asking if we require their services.  Cai Hong later tells me that their fare to Haikou is 100 RMB ($20).  Although the capital is situated fifteen kilometres northwest of the airport, the distance by road is twenty-five kilometres.  The taxi fare is relatively cheap for Australian travellers.  In Sydney, the fare for the same distance would be at least A$70 ($90).  Australian tourists are better off hiring taxis in Hainan than using public transport.  The convenience and time saved outweigh the financial savings.  To experience the locals’ daily lifestyle my wife and I, however, would frequently hop onto the bus.

After briefly exchanging stories about our histories, we head for the car park across the entrance.  Guo Tai carries the two parcels containing biscuits and coffee sachets while Cai Hong drags Mum’s small suitcase.  As I trudge across the hall with my luggage and laden haversack, the polished marble floor visibly reflects the profiles of foundation pillars and pots of plants on my sides as well as some travellers directly in front of me.  Not a shred of litter is evident.  The walls are brilliantly white.  No hand smudge is left by recalcitrant tourists as a memento of their presence.  The few shops are quiet.  Hainan is still an unspoiled paradise.  I am fortunate.

Outside, the sky is, however, grey.  It is drizzling.  With the winds, the predicted twenty-seven degrees Celsius turns out to be about twenty-four or even less.  There is winter in Haikou in January.  Wiser from her previous sojourns in Hainan, Mum has worn her jumper minutes before we land.  Guo Tai enquires if I am feeling cold.  Twenty degrees is still comfortable for me, I reply.  That is the truth.  I am armed for clement weather.  My favourite black vest is in my suitcase.  Our itinerary is planned around the winter months because the summer months of July and August can be humid with temperatures ranging from twenty-five to twenty-nine degrees Celsius.  In the northern parts of the island, a hot thirty-five degrees Celsius may cook the tourist’s face for more than twenty days annually.  During January and February the temperatures range from a slightly chilly sixteen degrees Celsius to a pleasant twenty-one degrees.

Chapter 2: 

Hainan, The Enticing Island


Visiting ancestral Houling and Xiayang, Wenchang


Guo Tai is driving his daughter’s car because she will be engrossed in communicating with us.  Skating eastwards along the Haikou Ring Expressway, we encounter heavier rainfall.  Overhead direction signs become less visible.  This downpour is nothing in comparison to the major floods they have encountered three months earlier, Cai Hong says.  Many low-lying parts of the east coast came under one to two metres of water then.    

Typhoons regularly batter the island around September and October.  With these summer typhoons comes around eighty percent of the island’s rainfall.  The annual precipitation can be as high as 2,400 millimetres (mm) in the eastern and central regions and as low as 900 mm in the coastal southwestern regions.  The average is about 1,500 mm.  We should be safe from the aftermath of these storms.

After fifteen minutes, Guo Tai makes the wrong choice at a fork, entering the lane of the Haiwen Expressway that will bring us back to Haikou.  A couple of minutes later, he stops by the kerb and, in the rain, waves to passing cars.  One stops.  Its owner advises a U-turn.  Tonight, our destinations are the villages of my paternal and maternal grandparents near coastal Huiwen, south of Wenchang town.  The latter is the principal town of the district called Wenchang City.
Administratively, Hainan Province is divided into nine “cities” and ten counties (six of which are autonomous).  Some of the other “cities” are, for example, Danzhou City, Qionghai City, and Sanya City, deriving their names from their principal towns.  In terms of population, the biggest is Haikou City, which has 2,046,189 residents in 2010.  Wenchang town is some fifty kilometres southeast of Meilan International Airport.

As I peer through the frosty windows from my back seat, I am amazed at the wide expanse.  Long sectors of trees flash by.  Now and again, a few houses, farms, and fields appear and disappear.  Space is surely not an obstacle for human habitation and commercial expansion here, I silently mutter.  This forsaken island is far less densely populated than Taiwan, which sustains twenty-three million people.  With only a meagre 8.6 million people, Hainan enjoys a low density of two hundred and forty-one people per square kilometre.  Environmental pollution will not be a problem.  An image of the lazy native relishing his morning siesta in a swinging hammock fettered to two coconut trunks dances through my mind.  Secretly, I smile.

During the thirty-minute drive, Cai Hong opens her checked black-and-white “football” the size of a golf ball, dangling from the long chain around her neck.  I have not stumbled upon such a newfangled hand phone before.  Haikou Longquan Garden Hotel tells her to call later.  Three other hotels have no vacancy for me.  As a result of a last-minute booking cancellation, Longquan Garden Hotel finally has a room for 188 RMB ($38) for the first night and a different room for 148 RMB ($30) for each of the subsequent nights.  Cai Hong explains that the three-day period from the first to the third of January is still part of the crowded post-Christmas holiday season.  Rich residents from northern China like Beijing and Shanghai are jetting into the island in droves to escape the harsh cold winter.

Now, that is the wonder of having a relative, who can rise to one’s assistance.  I assume - wrongly - that the holiday season will be over by the second of January.  This twenty-four year old niece even has the telephone number of the Wenchang shop that stocks firecrackers.  She has them, the proprietress reports.  When our car enters the town, the street is relatively deserted and the other shops along the long row are closed.  It is still drizzling.  My first glimpse of Wenchang is fuzzy.  Guo Tai rushes in and emerges with two boxes, each concealing a long strand of firecrackers.

Ten minutes later, our vehicle leaves the bitumen road and turns left into a country track.  We stopped after a short distance.  7 pm: it is drizzling, wet, and dark.  In front is Houling Village.  We scramble out.  In my haste, my survey of the few single-storey houses is brief.  My camera goes into action to capture what my eyes may miss.  “Thick Mountain Ridge” would be a misnomer to describe the village.  I spin around.  As far as I can see, the village is on a flat plain.  Where is the mountain or hill?  

No numbers mark the separate houses.  I suppose the postal delivery person knows each and every individual in the village through trial and error.  It will however confound foreigners trying to call at their friend’s home.  Fortunately, for us, our relatives are expecting us.  They are standing in a weathered brick house, talking.  On the table are some porcelain cups and a blackened tin teapot that has provided so well for so long.  

Cousin Guo Tai hangs a two-metre roll of red firecrackers on a compound wall surrounding the Pang family’s ancestral home and ignites its fuse with his cigarette lighter.  Not only are mythical trolls and imps loitering around the four houses and two long buildings in the compound frightened out of their wits, my heart too is throbbing frantically from the explosive reverberations last felt during the early nineteen-seventies.  The din attracts the few distant relatives and friends living less than a hundred metres away; it is an easy way of announcing our presence.

Going into one of the houses, Mum lights three yellow incenses, intones before the memorial altar of her grandparents-in-law the arrival and respect of their great-grandson, and implants the slender sticks into a small censer.  Reverentially, I stand still while my eyes scrutinise the home that I cannot remember.  The divine formalities concluded, she dutifully hands out some of the twenty crisp notes entrusted earlier to the curious babbling relatives, each fortunate one receiving 100 RMB (S$20), enough to buy five or six chickens for the dining table.  Some packets of biscuits and coffee sachets are distributed as well.  This prodigal son will be dieting over the next few weeks.

From one teary-eyed elderly lady flows word of recognition and encouragement to return.  It is a strange feeling.  I am transfixed.  The noises from the introductions leave me befuddled.  Now, who is who?  Once more, how is she related to me?

Mum proudly shows me around the small rectangular house where I was born.  Measuring approximately twelve metres in length and eight metres in breadth, it has four spartan rooms, two on each side of the narrow dividing hall.  This hall functions as a lounge and dining room, and is furnished with wooden furniture.  Each of great-grandfather Feng Yun Ke’s four sons had his own room.  I can now better appreciate their predilection to seek their fortune overseas.
From Singapore the third son adventurously made his way to Christmas Island while the second – my grandfather – sought his fortune in northern Vietnam.  First Granduncle Feng Zhen Jia, operating a coffee-shop in Pasir Panjang Terrace, has four sons and two daughters.  Third Granduncle Feng Zhen Xing has two sons and six daughters.  Fourth Granduncle Feng Zhen Dian has two sons and two daughters.  My grandfather has two sons and a daughter.  Grandfather died during the nineteen-thirties when his children were still young.  The granduncles have long since passed on.

Because it is getting late and dark, we decide not to linger.  Xiayang Village is, fortunately, only a few kilometres distant.  The road and track in are meandering and pitted with potholes.  They are also unlit.  The headlights illuminate the uneven track that is overshadowed by the arching branches of tall trees.  Thick bushes fence its sides, preventing me from seeing beyond.  No houses are visible.  Only atheists and disbelievers are brave to walk alone without jitters of ghosts and vampires.

Since their childhood, Guo Tai and his brothers have trampled along this deserted track to their schools two kilometres down the bitumen road.  On completion of his education, he found work in Haikou, first as a cab operator.  His older siblings now cultivate pepper vines in their own plots a stone-throw from their family home.  During the growing seasons, they also work in their paddy fields to eke out a subsistence living.

To augment their nutrition, First Cousin Guo Ping, in his fifties, regularly rides his motorcycle to the river mouth two kilometres south of their village.   As he wades waist-high in the shallow water, he hurls his sieve net to snare small fishes and prawns.  Any excess from the harvest is dried to be consumed over the course of the week or two.  He loves fishing.  He has two children.  His daughter Bi Zhuang (碧庄) is married to Singaporean banker Andy Teo Hang Peng while his son works and lives with his family in adjoining Qionghai county.  First Cousin has a serious countenance while his wife is always smiling.  

In contrast, Second Cousin Guo Dian is always smiling while his wife is more serious.  Sadly, their daughter drowned some years ago in a maritime accident at the relatively young age of fourteen.  Overcrowded with villagers excited and impatient to unearth the bountiful hordes of clams embedded in the sand bank at the river mouth, the unstable boat capsized midway.  Their son Fa Fu (法富) and daughter-in-law are working in Guangzhou, leaving Guo Dian and his wife to take care of their two tender granddaughters.  The parents return annually from Guangzhou for two weeks to celebrate the Chinese New Year festival.  

Enclosed within concrete walls, the Zhang family house, fronted with a huge compound of paved floors, is equally large and spartan.  Luxuries items are missing.  No display cupboard or bookshelf.  The portrait of Mum’s parents hangs on one side of the hall, which serves also as a dining room.  The bathroom-cum-toilet is not sited in the house but in a long side-building, which also accommodates a storeroom of firewood (next to the bathroom) and the kitchen.
Eldest Cousin attaches the second roll of firecrackers to a hook on the compound wall and lights it.  Again, the relatives dribble in.  Mum repeats the customary petitionary prayer at her family altar and gift distribution to the assembly.  

This holiday, nephew Fa Geng (张法耿) and his family have driven up from Qionghai town to visit his parents.  And he has invited the four of us - Guo Tai, Cai Hong, Mum, and I - for dinner.  He is waiting at a cafe in Huiwen, its name vocalised in Hainanese as “Wee Boon” (or “Boone”) while that of Wenchang is “Boone See-oo”.  This coastal town, two kilometres south of Houling Village, has a population of about twenty-eight thousand.  Astonishingly, some ninety-two percent are overseas returnees.  

Two of the six or so tables in the no-frill cafe are occupied by two or three persons each.  My recollection is hazy.  The waitress is probably the proprietor-chef’s wife.  I place my backpack containing my passport, laptop, and 5,000 RMB on the chair nearest to me.  It is my lifeline.  I clutch it wherever I go.  I do not wish to be left high and dry on my first day.  Because of pre-order, five dishes show up immediately.  A steamed Wenchang chicken, cut into mandible bites, is on one plate; three lightly fried Cod cutlets are on another.  Two crabs are fried in a sauce with transparent rice vermicelli; a plate contains a pile of fresh green sweet peas, stir-fried with crushed garlic; and sea cucumbers fried with leeks in a flour-based sauce are on the last.  
After a long day, my stomach is eagerly gasping out for them.  Half of the Wenchang chicken gradually piles up on my bowl of rice.  Try as we may, we are unable to finish the sumptuous dishes.  They are enough to feed seven or eight persons.  In vain I offer to settle the bill.  Fa Geng, however, insists on paying.  After leaving him and Mum, who is spending her holiday in her Zhang family home, the three of us head for Haikou.  Forty-five minutes later, we reach Longquan Garden Hotel at half past ten.  After assisting in the formalities at the reception, they take their leave.  Cai Hong will be taking me out the next day.  

Alone in my room, I unpack.  The bathroom is clean; the bed is firm; and the room is spacious.  At Kimberley Hotel in Hong Kong where we stayed three years ago, my wife and I - in disbelief - re-checked with the receptionist to verify that the small room was the “standard” room we had paid for.  Yes, replied the courteous gentleman.  But the room are bigger in the internet photo, I exclaimed.  He was unfazed.  “As you know, the apartments and rooms in Hong Kong are all very small.”  I was soundly rebutted.  We stayed four days, the twenty-four hour restaurants across the road being the compelling attraction.  For the same price, the room at the YMCA International House is slightly more spacious and convenient, located beside Yau Ma Tei train station.

As I lie on the soft bed, I reflect on the events of the day.


Hainan Provincial Museum and Chinese history


I wake up at six-thirty in the morning to loud Taiji music flowing melodiously from the playground below my first-floor window in the three-storey block directly backing the Haikou People’s Park.  It is still dark; it is winter, and the clumps of bushy trees may have also deflected the early rays of the sun.  Mercifully, the winters of Haikou are very mild.  I try to photograph the people and their activities.  But two long branches of leaves obstruct my lens.  Even with the aid of flash, my camera succeeds in recording only the outline of a badminton court that is mainly obscured by the dense foliage.  Not a soul is on the court.

Directly below me are two middle-aged men playing a game of table-tennis.  Are they still stricken by the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games fever?  Gold medals were won by Chinese individuals and teams, who had dominated the table game for a long time.  It is a cheap sport since a table, a pair of bats, and a ping-pong ball are all that is required.  I can hear people talking.  But I cannot see them.  Ping!  Another ping-pong ball hits the second table beyond my visual range.  Along the narrow path, some individuals and couples pace briskly for their morning exercise.  They are silent.  I leave them to their enjoyment.  Fortunately, no one is playing basketball or volley.

I prepare for the shift to the cheaper room in the five-storey block at the hotel entrance.  This plain but modern white building faces some shopping centres across the Haixiu East Road.  Along my side of the road are other hotels, some with more expensive nightly rates than others.  Longquan Hotel was once scheduled for demolition.  Thank goodness, it was saved.   My three-star room with two single beds will be my abode for the next nine days.  

Cai Hong arrives with her husband and brother.  They invite me for lunch at the hotel restaurant.  I expect a crowded hall; instead, we are ushered into a private room.  Sitting at a round table for ten diners, I feel uneasy, unaccustomed to such deferential treatment.  Among the six dishes of large portions are two of Hainan’s most famous: Wenchang chicken and Dongshan mutton.  Because the birds are free-range for six to nine months, the steamed meat is less fatty, more muscular, and thus slightly tough.  Accustomed to the taste of tender caged-chicken meat, I brashly voice that frank opinion, which on retrospection is not diplomatic.

But the goat mutton is tender and the sauce sweet and tasty.  It comes in a delightful mini-wok placed on its special stand with an inbuilt fuel container emitting a flame to heat the wok.  This course will certainly be on my dinner list for entertaining guests.  The others are black chicken in a bowl of herbal soup, a whole steamed white pomfret seasoned with brown light soy sauce in a plate of green peas and black mushrooms, fish fillets stir-fried with green long beans and beige cashew nuts and doled on a white plate decorated with a fresh red cherry and green corianders, and meat buns with sesame seeds.  The colours run riot.

As the dishes come in quick succession, my attempt at conversation remains stilted.  I am painfully conscious that my command of Mandarin and Hainanese is not good enough to facilitate a fluent dialogue.  If only Jo is here to relieve my clumsiness, I silently lament.  Talking to Lin Xue Xin (林学新) and nephew Fa Gao (张法高) also makes me aware that the Hainanese spoken in one region of the island may be incomprehensible even to the locals in another.  Effortlessly, Cai Hong is able to switch from one form to another.  She is, thankfully, my reliable mind reader and interpreter.  While she is talking, I am trying to eat as much as I can, not realising that the remainder may be packed as takeaways.  When the waitresses have executed their final duty, I want to fade away to hide my gluttony.  After clearing the bill, Xue Xin and Fa Gao bid farewell.  They have faithfully observed the protocol, the traditional respect to their “Uncle”.

Tiny water droplets are starting to fall.  Cai Hong unfolds her umbrella.  We stroll to the hotel entrance.  A bus shelter lies ten metres to our right.  Tropical trees with out-spreading branches thrive on the Haixiu East Road pavements while ubiquitous coconut palms stand erect like sentinels along the road dividers and on the edge of the road.  I am wary.  Will there be flying fruits during a strong gush of wind?  A mature coconut weighs at least a kilogram.  Every year falling coconuts killed about one hundred and fifty people globally, thrice the number of people killed by fearsome sharks!  

With that hovering thought, I obediently followed Cai Hong as she weaves her way through the morning crowd.  Young girls follow the latest trend, attired in clothes that are bright and colourful.  Their shoes too look chic and expensive.  And their deportment does not harmonize with the deportment of many older and elderly people, who are oblivious to worldly fads and mannerism.  We clamber up the overhead bridge for the opposite bus stop.  There we wait for a No. 29 bus to bring us to Haifu Road, the right divergence of Haixiu East Road from the nearby traffic roundabout.

Like most of the roads in downtown Haikou constructed after the Second World War, Haixiu East Road and Haifu Road are straight and clean.  They are also wide and heavy with traffic.  American road rules apply: drivers sit on left front seats, drive on the right-hand side of roads, and need to be careful of not only the pedestrians in front but also the oncoming traffic when waiting to turn left into a side road.  Not accustomed to that driving system, my wife and I have decided on caution and safety.  Many of the cars are imported.  Honda Civics and Toyotas are common, testimony to the increasing wealth of people in Hainan.

After a slow ride of about two kilometres, the bus passes Bailong South Road.  We alight and board a No. 39.  The fare is also 1 RMB each.  Both buses are crowded.  During the short trips, I cast quick glimpses at the streets and buildings.  Like many cities and towns in emerging economies, Haikou is a city in transition.  Aligned with Beijing’s futuristic vision of sustainable growth and prosperity, construction work is increasing.  Noise is inevitable.  So too are holes in the ground, bulldozers, and cranes.  Old greyish buildings and new white skyscrapers compete for attention in juxtaposition.  The former now cry out for a coat of paint to blend them with the surrounding bright giants towering proudly over them.  No. 39 bus terminates at Wentan Road.  

Two hundred metres away is an entrance to Haikou College of Economics (海口经济学院; Haikou Jingji Xueyuan) at the end of Xingdan Road, off Guoxing Avenue.  The five buildings comprising part of the institution are like any other ordinary office buildings.  If not for the painted name of the private college in dull golden colour on the impressive arch at the start of the unnamed internal road, a visitor may even mistake them for residential units.  The most outstanding building is the one with bluish tint windows facing me, the “Administration Building”, declared the large English words (and the Chinese equivalent) above its entrance.  Five white buses, painted on their sides with the college name in red, are parked by both kerbs of the private road that is enclosed by moveable gates operated by the security officer at the sentry box.  Four other cars and vans are also parked nearby.  

Seven or eight students ease across the wide college road between the two college blocks; perhaps most of the students are in their classes.  I quickly speak to one.  She does not understand English.  No, this college is not part of Hainan Normal University, she responds to my question through Cai Hong.  She adds, in Mandarin, that the college conducts courses like accountancy, agriculture, economics, engineering, and English.  Cai Hong brings me here for a quick glance because it is also close to the Sports Center Tennis Court and Haikou Provincial Museum.

She hails a pedicab.  For 4 RMB, the rider pedals us first to the Sports Center, two hundred metres distant at the corner of Wentan Road and Guoxing Avenue, to snap a photograph and then to the museum a kilometre from the Sports Center.  This is my first ride on a Hainan pedicab.  Unlike some trishaws fitted with motors and propelled by electricity, this gentleman in his late forties depends on his sheer leg power.  As it is still drizzling, I peek at the façade of the new tennis court, a miniaturized version of a football stadium.  The wall of this circular building consists of hundreds of blue tinted-glass panels.  A long flight of gradual steps leads to the entrance.  An arts festival will commence later today, according to the advertisements on the three two-metre tall red boxes placed strategically on the steps for the occasion.  This Chinese New Year event is sponsored by HNA, a hotel chain.  

Although its name is “Provincial”, which is accurate but may convey the wrong impression that it is “unsophisticated”, the museum is a new and imposing building at 65 Guoxing Avenue.  Cai Hong and I search for the ticket office.  Yes, there is one.  To our pleasant surprise, admission is free.  I am puzzled.  Why then have a ticket office?  The crowd is missing.  Cai Hong has not been here even though her unit off Haifu Road is less than five kilometres away.  We gingerly walk up the flight of steps, our shoes feeling the flexible texture of the spotless red carpet.  I am careful not to leave any muddy trail with my pair of wet shoes.  We feel like VIPs.  The state government spares no expense in promoting the dignity of visitors.
 
On both wings of Level 1 are exhibition halls, one devoted to paintings while the other to ancient and modern Hainan history.  Along the corridor between the two wings is a small commercial outlet.  Stacked on its shelves and counter are many wooden teapots, a sight that is bizarre to me.  China is well known for its export of exquisite porcelain teapots, made in diverse sizes and shapes.  An inexpensive one may be purchased for only $10, or even less.  Of course, imperial pieces from the Ming dynasty or Qing emperor Kangxi’s palace have reaped millions each in international auctions.

Cai Hong explains that the Hainan huali mu (花梨木; literally, Flowering Pear Wood, a variety of rosewood with high oil content and shiny hue) is a rare wood and is practically indestructible by water and worms.  Hence their prices are steep.  Small tea pots range from 4,600 RMB ($900) to 5,600 RMB ($1,120).

No thank you!  I expeditiously move on.  I dread the thought of accidentally dropping even a small one.

Exploring the two floors of Chinese historical artefacts, Level 2 being devoted to native culture and also ancient relics, is exciting and fun, especially with less than ten other visitors competing for standing space.  Excavated from different sites on the island, antique ceramics and bronze wares from various periods are ensconced in glass showcases.  While I am reading the accompanying notes, Cai Hong offers to photograph them for me.  I hand over my Canon Powershot.  There she goes, clicking continuously.  Dioramas of early native life on Hainan Island and life in twentieth-century Old Haikou are also entertaining and educational.  

Six thousand years ago, the island was uninhabited.  Then fishing too far off the coast of Leizhou Peninsula, some natives might have drifted with the current and spied a lush green island in the distance.  Their innate curiosity, or physical hunger, would inspire them to cautiously steer towards the unknown realm of strange sights and sounds.  What they soon discovered was a fertile plain, furnished with brooks of fresh running water as well as fish, shell fish, and crustaceans proliferating in the brackish water and soft sands of mangrove swamps.  They pried open some shells.  Embedded within were lustrous round objects, ranging from tiny to large sizes and capturing the milkish colour of the full moon.  That was magic.  They returned to share news of their discovery.  Secured with their gods and ancestral spirits by their side, they migrated and erected bamboo huts in the new land.  

Some three thousand years later, during the late Shang or early Zhou dynasty, the Yue made a similar move.  Related to the Tai of Indochina, these early ancestors of the Li settled along the coastal plains, especially near river mouths.  The Lis have a legend about their origin, which is similar to the well-known Biblical story.  Surviving a universal flood by clinging onto a calabash gourd, a man and a woman were jettisoned onto Yanwo Mountain in Hainan.  They married and procreated to produce the Li people.

By the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.), more than a hundred thousand natives from different ethnic groups were living off the idyllic coast.  Their cultural habits would shock us; for men and women did not consider “it to be shameful that their private parts are exposed.”  So reports historian Edward H. Schafer in his book The Shore of Pearls.  Under pressure from waves of later migrants, they were marshalled inland to the central highlands around the majestic Wuzhishan.  Their descendents still live in these central and southern regions, in the Li Autonomous Counties of Baisha, Changjiang, Ledong, and Lingshui and the Li-and-Miao Autonomous Counties of Baoting and Qiongzhong.  These counties constitute slightly over half the island.  Today, the Li is the largest indigenous group, comprising slightly more than 15.8% of the population (up from 14.7% in 2000).  Throughout the centuries, they maintained infrequent contact with the Han settlers, who now dominate the coastal plains.

Among the museum exhibits is a life-size bronze sculpture, locked behind glass panels, of Xian Furen (冼夫人) on her horse.  The sixth-century lady warrior in military dress holds an imperial insignia in her right hand.  In her thirties, she is expressionless.  Behind her is a panel narrating in Mandarin her heroism.  Her husband is Feng Bao (simplified 冯宝; traditional 馮寳), whose surname is identical to mine.  Could they be my ancestors?  That intriguing question will continue to unsettle me over the subsequent months.  Who is Lady Xian (or, in Wade-Giles’ romanised form, Madame Sinn)?

In my Sydney home is a photocopy of only Volume 10 of the Feng genealogy.  A full set was published twenty years ago by the Feng Clan Association in Qionghai City.  Printed on rice paper, the extremely light Volume 10 consists of a hundred pages in A5 size.  The interesting feature is that, instead of being glued like paperbacks, its pages are hand-sewn with a thread, which can be cut to permit the insertion of supplementary pages of new births.  Counting from ancestor Feng Cong Mei (冯从美), I belong to the twenty-second generation of Feng, with the generational name “Qi” (启; enlighten).  In other words, Chinese from that lineage with the surname “Feng” and middle name “Qi” belong to my generation.  They are my cousins, my equals, whether close or distant.  In the Chinese system of honour and respect, Chinese with the middle name “Shi”, other than my father, are my uncles.  And Chinese with the middle name “Jia”, other than my son, are my nephews.  

The naming system, and the conferment of an appropriate name, is a very important aspect of Chinese culture, which is founded fundamentally on Confucianism.  Ascribing the incorrect name to a person or an event will lead to pandemonium in society.  In the Analects, Confucius (551–479 B.C.) explained, “When names are not correct, what is said will not sound reasonable ... (and) affairs will not culminate in success....”  He offered the example of a drinking vessel that was wrongly depicted as a “gu” (觚).  (A gu was a drinking vessel with a regulation capacity used to offer ritual libations.)  His sardonic comment was, “A gu that is not truly a gu.  A gu indeed!  A gu indeed!”  His disciple Mencius (372-289 B.C.) was dangerously blunt: an emperor who does not behave like an emperor is, in fact, a bandit and should be described as such.  Overthrowing a “bandit” is not an action against the Will of Heaven.

Correct ascription of names inculcates respect.  A good ruler leads by example, following the Divine for moral direction.  “It is Heaven that is great and it was (sage-ruler) Yao who modelled himself upon it.”  When the ruler respects Heaven, the citizens will respect the ruler, and the sons and daughters will respect their parents and their elders.  The term “elders” is distinguished from the term “elderly”.  The former refers to generational age while the latter refers to chronological age.  For instance, my uncle – my father’s brother or cousin – might be younger than me.  This is sometimes the quirk in a large family, where the age gap between the oldest and the youngest siblings can be more than thirty years.  

Both chronological age and generational seniority are paramount in Chinese culture.  But generation trumps over age in a clan.  Just I am customarily obligated to respectfully address a Chinese with “Feng Shi xxx” as my “uncle”, so too the same respect is extended to me by the next generation.  When I was a sixteen-year teen, I felt squeamish when addressing - as instructed - my ten-year old relative as “Uncle”.  That is Confucian culture.  That is Chinese culture.  Chinese genealogical registers only record the paternal lineage, the bearers of the specific surname.  Women do not have specific generation-names because they assume their husbands’ lineage upon their marriage.

The genealogical register has its roots in the family register, which played an ominous role in ancient China, namely, that of social control.  Since the Qin dynastic era (221 B.C.–207 B.C.), all families within the empire were required to keep registers recording information like the age, sex, and occupation of all the members.  The head of each household was held responsible for any misdemeanour or crime committed by his family members, and the village head for any offences within his village.  If a man had committed a serious crime, his wife, parents, and brothers would be executed.  If it was an extremely serious crime, all members of his close-knit or even extended family would be executed.  From these registers, the state officials could also form decisions on corvee labour, conscription, and taxation.  

So important were these registers that Han officials conducted check on their accuracy every eight months, severely penalising errors.  The Ming rulers took social control to the extreme.  All families were ordered to hang a sign on their front door, listing the name, age, and original hometown of all residents, including employees, in the house.  Among the aristocracy, family registers and genealogical records played a crucial role in marriage arrangements.  In the Northern Wei kingdom, the ruling families would only marry among themselves.  This obsession with pedigree was shared by the founders of the Tang dynasty; they commissioned a study into the lineages of their leading officials.  Infamous empress dowager Wu Zetian was unhappy with the low status accorded to her clan.  I can now appreciate the accuracy of the population census conducted since the time of ancient China.

Tracing backwards, I tentatively calculate that my attested “Feng” family tree began about six or seven hundred years ago.  Yet the Feng clan to which I belong may have a much longer ancestry, an ancestry of one thousand and seven hundred years or even earlier.  Springing from that source of my possible lineage is, however, the line of Feng Bao, the husband of woman warrior Madame Xian, so that - today - running through the veins of contemporary Fengs in Feng Bao’s line is the blood of a usurper and a goddess-warrior.  Scattered throughout the world, they may also be kin to a famous - or notorious - empress and a loyal chief eunuch.  Is my lineage an appendage of Feng Bao’s lineage?  Or is it a parallel lineage from a different “Feng” ancestor?
 
Little do I realize that my visit to Hainan would direct me into an intriguing search for my ancestral root in imperial China.  My eyes are becoming increasingly alert to the earliest historical references on the aristocratic Fengs, who had some links with Hainan Island.  They might possibly be the ancestors of my Feng clan in the remote island.  Is there any connection?

My heart palpitates when I later open an article “Lady Sinn and the Southwards Expansion of China in the Sixth Century” written by Professor Geoffrey Wade in 2004.  As I read his absorbing history of Lady Xian, one sentence glares out at me: “The Hainan Feng family genealogy also notes Feng Ang as the primal ancestor who came to Hainan.”  I am stunned; I am dying to find out more.  

A poster in the ancient history exhibition hall captures my attention next.  The headline states: “Guests immigrating from the north in hard times, Qiongya people had unusual relationship with them”.  It is an understatement; the “guests” were political exiles.  Among them was a Mongolian prince who would later become emperor. Tugh Temur (1304–1332) was the second son of Khaishan (Kulug Khan or Emperor Wuzong; reign: 1307-1311).  When his father, the great-grandson of Kublai Khan, unexpectedly died in 1311, his uncle (Khaishan’s younger brother Ayurbarwada) became the emperor under a deal made in 1307.  Tugh Temur was only seven years of age then.  In 1316, the emperor appointed his own son as the crown prince and exiled Tugh’s older brother Khoshila (Kusala), a political threat, to Yunnan.  

Upon his ascension to the throne, the emperor’s son and successor Shidebala (reign: 1321-1323) similarly banished seventeen-year old Tugh Temur to Hainan.  There Tugh Temur stayed for three years until 1324 when Shidibala was assassinated by a group of conspirators, who enthroned Yesun Temur (Khaishan’s cousin).  Recalled, Tugh Temur soon married his cousin, who was the daughter of Khaishan’s and Ayurbarwada’s influential sister.  He was given the title of Prince of Huai (懷王) and lived in his palace in Jiankang (now Nanjing).  

Yesun Temur died in 1328, sparking off a power struggle.  Tugh Temur was installed by his supporters and ruled (as Jayaatu Khan; Emperor Wenzong of Yuan 元文宗) for five months from October 1328, abdicating in favour of his brother Khoshila.  When his brother died six months later, he regained his throne and ruled until September 1332.  In total, his reign was brief.  However, he continued the tradition of his predecessors, promoting Chinese culture through his Kuizhangge Academy.

Highlighting local history and society, Haikou Provincial Museum is a silent testimony to the people’s pride in their homeland.  Two hours elapse too soon, and it is five in the late afternoon.  We decide on Sichuan dishes at a restaurant close to my hotel.  Still distracted by the several events of the day, I fail to note its name and address.  As we enter, the waitress in smart cheongsam, a traditional Chinese body-hugging dress with seductive, high side-slits, politely escorts us to an unoccupied table.  The presence of diners scattered around the huge room reassures me of the food quality.  But I am apprehensive of the prices.  The first bowl of fish fillets in soup shocks me.  The bowl is exceedingly huge; it is the size of a frying wok.  I can keep a few pet goldfishes in there.

Lots of dried chillies, fried until they are black, are floating on the surface of the soup as well as in it.  Is the chef trying to torture us?  Do people in Sichuan really eat so much hot chilli?  I call for another bowl of rice to ease the fiery sensation on my tongue.  Including the Wenchang chicken and mixed vegetable, the dishes are sufficient to feed four or five persons.  If I have known the size of the servings, I would have opted for a simple dinner at a roadside café.  The bill comes to 200 RMB.  Too much for two persons.  Cai Hong insists on paying.

Unbearably full, I request Cai Hong to bring me to the nearby bookstore mentioned earlier by her.  Tucked away on the fifth floor of the Mingzhu Square plaza that faces my hotel, it is reputedly the biggest in Haikou.  The map on sale is extremely useful.  Not only does it show the names (alas, in Mandarin) of all the major and minor roads from Haidian Island in the north of Haikou to Yehai Avenue in the south and from Qiongshan Avenue in the east and Changyi Road in the west in sufficient detail, it also has all the bus numbers printed on the roads.  By matching the bus numbers at my intended destination for the day with the bus numbers at my hotel bus stand, I can easily find my way around the streets of Haikou using cheap public transport.  I am extremely delighted with this guide.    


Haikou’s modern waterfront and Evergreen Park


Evergreen Park (万绿园; Wanlu Yuan) on Haikou’s northern shore is an ideal destination for my initial self-guided tour since it is only three kilometres west of my hotel as the crow flies.  It is a test.  If I can reach it without difficulty, then I will acquire the confidence to ramble around Hainan Island on my own.  Cai Hong is at work today, a Tuesday.  

After a hasty bowl of hot handmade noodle ornamented with a few thin strips of goat mutton for the unbeatable price of only 6 RMB at a Hui café along busy Nanbao Road, I casually stroll along Haixiu East Road for Longkun North Road, despite the slight drizzle.  I can easily hop onto any bus but walking and window-shopping seems to be the best means of feeling the daily pulse of local people.

Unfortunately, from Lantian Road onwards, the many hotels and office buildings that outnumber the few retail shops prod me to quicken, although I do pause to admire the tall, shady trees along the uncrowded pathway.  It is then that I also appreciate the broad width of Haixiu East Road, and the open space of the capital.  The main road consists of six lanes.  On both kerbs is a narrow row of trees, principally coconut palms.  Next to each row of trees is a lane for buses to pick up their passengers, who are waiting on the wide pedestrian pathways.  And, finally, beside each pathway is a lane for delivery vehicles to unload their wares at the doorsteps of shops.  Thus, altogether, ten lanes are for motor vehicles and two pathways are for pedestrians.  

After a kilometre, I turn right into Longkun North Road.  Haikou Century Hotel is at the corner.  After it is Kingsley Hotel at the intersection of Longkun North Road and Huyin East Road.  I wait for the No. 21 bus near Kingsley Hotel.  For only 1 RMB, it brings me along Longhua Road, Yusha Road, Guomao Road, Mingzhu Road, and finally Binhai Avenue.  As I constantly struggle to orientate the map and ascertain my shifting location with reference to prominent landmarks, my vision is obstructed by the standing crowd in the bus.  Shortly, a park materialises as the bus veers right into Binhai Avenue.  Before I realize that it is my intended destination, the bus has reached Bell Tower and the northern fringe of Old Haikou, a kilometre and a half north of my hotel.  A change of plan is inevitable.  Have I failed my self-test?

Heritage buildings are preserved within Old Haikou, the small area bound by Changdi Road (on the north running beside the northern shore), Wenming West Road (on the south running parallel to Changdi Road half a kilometre distant), Heping Road (on the east), and Bo’ai North Road (on the west).  The streets at the northern end are narrow, suggesting a densely populated area.  With so many shops there selling all sorts of interesting products, I decide to explore the area on another day.  Haikou, the capital, has a population of just slightly over a million and a half in 2010, a contrast to the 2,655,570 people crowding the Taiwanese capital, Taipei City.  The density of about nine hundred people per square kilometre in Haikou makes for a less stressful lifestyle for its inhabitants.  Indeed, human movements are leisurely, not as sprightly as the movements of Sydney’s Pitt Street crowds.  

Traffic at the upper parameter of Old Haikou is chaotic.  Only when I have safely crossed to the Bell Tower coastal walkway do I realize it.  Pedestrians are king of the road.  While most pedestrians, trishaw operators, and motorcyclists congregate at the crossing line upon the flash of the red signal, some impatient people risk their lives, jaywalking.  They tread casually through the flowing traffic, the tolerant drivers instinctively decelerating and skilfully manoeuvring around them.  As the traffic signal changes, those waiting surge forward.  Among them are ten young students in light-blue tracksuits.  Watching them, I envisage the potential of my ancestral land resting in their hands.  It is drizzling.  While motorists are protected in drab raincoats, pedestrians carry umbrellas of various colours.  

Beside the Bell Tower is a bridge that arches over Haidian River.  As I examine my map, the name “Haidian River” seems to be a misnomer.  Should it not be called “Haidian Sea”?  Then re-looking, I understand the reason for the appellation.  As its name implies, Haikou is located at the mouth of a river in the northern part of Hainan Island.  “Hai” (海) in Mandarin means “Sea” and “Kou” (口) means “Mouth”.  At three hundred and fourteen kilometres in length, the Nandu River is, in fact, the longest river on the island with its source in the central mountain ranges.  The silt it brought eons ago formed the very islet before my eyes.  This islet splits the Nandu at its terminating point.  Haidian River is thus an off-shoot of the Nandu.

Although it is the largest islet off Haikou, Haidian is still a small islet because it is only about six kilometres from east to west and four kilometres from north to south.  Renmin Bridge is the starting point for the Renmin Expressway, which invisibly dissects the islet.  The concrete bridge is very broad, with four lanes for larger vehicles like cars and trucks, two lanes for smaller vehicles like trishaws and motorcycles, and two walkways for pedestrians.  The low fences dividing the vehicle lanes are portable, thus permitting ad hoc changes for smoother traffic flow.  The traffic is heavy but the pedestrians, few.  I walk on the left side of the bridge, and savour the view of the wide placid river below me, a scene that reminds me of the modern Singapore River from Boat Quay.

After crossing the bridge, I descend a flight of stairs to Haidian East Road.  This road abuts the waterfront in the east-west direction, and is almost devoid of traffic, although a few cars are parked by the kerb.  It is just after noon; yet it is not hot or humid.  At a glance, I estimate a crowd of more than fifty customers and spectators along the narrow walkway, curiously peering into round cane-baskets, plastic buckets of different sizes, and rectangular white Styrofoam containers.

About twenty fishmongers, mainly ladies, are parading their live breams, flatheads, Flower Groupers, soles, and whitings.  Elvers around ten centimetres and eels up to a metre in length are wriggling in partially closed containers.  Depressed by confinement, some vault out to explore the world, causing a commotion.  Prawns are kept alive with fresh air pumped into their water through a tube attached to a small generator.  Lightly fried in aromatic garlic, black pepper, and sea salt, they should be succulent and tasty.  Small octopuses weighing around a kilogram each and shellfish like abalone, cockles, and mussels are also on offer.
 
“Would you like to buy these crayfish?  They are fresh and sweet.”  One lady eagerly enquires.
“No, thanks,” I reply regretfully.  

If only I have a portable cooker and wok, I would have bought them off her.  The meat cannot get fresher than that; for the products they are selling have only been brought here by returning fishing trawlers this morning.  While most of the fishermen have gone home, some are still in their boats.  They are active, tidying up after their day’s catch or preparing for the next day’s expedition.

A busybody, I move to the next stall and listen with fascination as a man haggles with the vendor over the price of a “jin” (half a kilogram) of cutlets, which she has just sliced off the lifeless mackerel.  Is he persuaded by her competitive price or by her beauty?  He leaves with a plastic bag.  His wife will be happy with the bargain.  As I continue to inspect the items, my mind conjures up the variety of dishes on the dinner table of the inhabitants.  But how do they cook the elvers or eels?  Baked, fried, or steamed?  

From Bell Tower, a motorized trishaw takes me for 5 RMB to Haikou New Port (Haikou Xingang), a kilometre off.  I expect to see ships transporting passengers and motor vehicles to Hai’an and Zhanjiang on mainland China.  The lady in her early forties deposits me at a deserted car park. There I stand, alone, and bewildered, and soon accosted by two shipping agents offering competitive tickets to Hai’an.  I disappoint them when I say that I only want to see arriving and departing ships.  

They laugh.  “How can you see sailing ships if you are not on deck?”  
“Isn’t there a gate where I can see the ships?”  I sheepishly croak.
“No”

Are they pulling a fast one on me?  I am skeptical.  I walk to the entrance of the building.  True, there is only a ticketing counter.  A large arrival-and-departure time-table is attached to the wall.  But the wharf and its berthed ships are hidden behind contiguous buildings.  I walk out in dejection, and also feeling silly.  They must think that I am crazy.  Like train enthusiasts, I have a similar thrill when spotting steaming ships.  Today, I am let down.

Catching a No. 21 bus back to the stop opposite the place where I first board a No. 21, I am vigilant for the intersection of Longhua with Longkun North Road.  During the ride, a young lady in her twenties generously surrenders her seat to me.  This is the first time I am given a seat by a lady.  I am not only old; I must be looking old.  Refusing to acknowledge the inevitable, I later heroically surrender the seat to a boarding lady and her nine-year old daughter.  Judging from my accent, she identifies me as a Singaporean.  Born in Guangdong, she has worked in Singapore for six years before residing in Hainan where her husband is now stationed.
Her English competency is as good as my Cantonese.  I struggle to communicate with her in Mandarin.  In response to her question, I tell her the location of my past residence in Singapore: Clementi.  When I add that I am getting off at the intersection, she expresses her concern.

“How are you going to your hotel from here?”
“Pao qu (跑去; run there),” I blurt out when what I intend to say is “zou qu (走去; walk there)”, my mental dictionary failing me at the critical moment.

She is mystified.  I swiftly gesticulate, “walking” my two right fingers across the palm of my left hand.  She still returns an incredulous expression, which further embarrasses me.  Other passengers are listening.  Fortunately, I recognize my impending stop and hurriedly wish her well in her future.  I wave goodbye to her cute daughter, who sweetly reciprocate.  She is so adorable, so polite.  

As it is fairly dark at six-thirty in the evening, I board a No. 16, which brings me back to Mingzhu Square plaza.  Occupying two levels, the KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) restaurant is crowded, a sign that business is lucrative.  In my queue, a couple and a family with a young boy have precedence.  In the next queue are five adults and two children.  Seated in separate tables are a man, two solitary ladies, a family with three kids, a lady with her seven-year old and eight-year old sons in school uniforms, and a Caucasian with a long, slender item, possibly a retractable window blind, by his side.  For 30 RMB, I get two pieces of chicken, a small container of coleslaw, a cup of Coke, a hot bun, and a blueberry custard tart.  The tart is crispy, yet soft like the famous Macau custard tarts.

Determined to see Evergreen Park and ships sailing from Haikou Port, I take bus No. 34 the following day, a Wednesday.  I assume it will travel in a westerly direction to pass Longkun North Road, where I will alight to catch a connecting northbound bus; instead, it takes a circuitous route, turning right into Daying West Road and Datong Road on the left edge of Haikou Park.  After a kilometre, Datong Road intersects with Longhua Road and Jiefang Road.  At this intersection northwest of Haikou People’s Park is a bustling part of the city hub.  

Three huge white statues repose in the middle of the traffic circle.  Their presence astounds me.  The first lady stands slightly inclined, with her left hand touching the outside of her left knee and her right hand buried among the long flowing hairs behind her head; the second is seated, her face imploring the heavens as her open palms, raised before her eyes, offer a dove of peace; and the third is resting care-free on her left side, her left hand supporting her left chin.

Except for their flowing garments, which shield their lower bodies, they are naked.  Their small busts are taut, parted, and pointed.  The upright lady, about three metres in height, has a broad masculine European face.  My head turns with the moving bus.  There is a small statue too: a little naked cherubic infant lying on his belly, his hands supporting his chin and legs bent backwards.  That this set of captivating statues stands dignified in the heart of busy Haikou is unprecedented.  Four decades earlier their creator and admirers would have been imprisoned for the “crime” of bourgeois decadence.  

The Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 was a traumatic period for all Chinese.  As an exercise in liberation, symbols of the past and the West were ruthlessly destroyed.  Western music was banned; religious relics and buildings were smashed.  Even veterans of the famous Long March and stalwarts of the Communist Party like Deng Xiaoping, He Long, Liu Shaoqi, Luo Ruiqing, Peng Dehuai, and Peng Zhen were tarred who betrayed a minute of liberal thought.  Fortunately, the Gang of Four led by Jiang Qing was deposed.  A modern Hainan is now rapidly emerging from the anti-western conservatism that restrained not so long ago.  Three cheers to the artistic tolerance of Hainan!

Turning into Longhua Road, the bus heads southwestwards.  After it slides under the overhead Longkun North Road, I drop off.  The 1-RMB fare is more than reasonable.  Two Hainanese elderly ladies are selling a local dessert (Hainanese: yi puah), made by steaming the flour dough filled with grated coconut kernels, crushed peanuts, and brown sugar.  The circular cake measuring ten centimetres in diameter and two centimetres in depth is held in shape by a specially-crafted patty holder of banana leaf, which imparts a fragrant flavour.   It rouses my memory of those occasionally made by Mum when I was young.  Tempted to taste one, I desist, the thought of a weak stomach deterring me.

People are crossing the road despite the red blinking traffic light, and small motor scooters are weaving their way around the buses, cars, and pedestrians.  Bus No. 21 arrives.  I hop onto it and insert my 1-RMB note into the collection box.  Flashing through the bus’ overhead electronic board is its destination as well as the current external temperature: 21 degrees Celsius.  If this is perpetual, I may retire in Haikou.  A red bucket with black plastic liner is placed near the exit for litters.  The passing streets are crowded.  At the start of Mingzhu Road is Quoma Club.  A huge statue stands out.  Reaching Wanlu Park, I press the bell.  Only near the intersection of Longkun North Road and Binhai Avenue does it stop.  The China Construction Bank is a striking building with character.

Friendly Noodle Café seems like an imitation of a McDonald; the setting and furniture are similar, except for the food.  A quick count reveals forty-nine patrons, mostly young executives in smart suits or dresses.  Are they employees of neighbouring banks or hotels?  Five waitresses are flying from table to table, removing empty trays or serving food to hungry patrons.  Behind the counter, three waitresses attend to the constant flow of customers.  Chicken Rice cost 15 RMB while a bowl of thick millet soup 3 RMB.  The servings are so generous that I later return to have my early dinner: the Duck Rice costs 15 RMB and come, for an extra 3 RMB, with a plate of boiled lettuce and a bowl of soup laced with twirling strings of scrambled egg and seaweeds.  The prices are inexpensive, and I am happy.

As I walk into Wanlu Park, three professional photographers separately advance to offer their services.  If only I have an inkling of my own photographic incompetence, I would have accepted their skill.  Four young giggling girls in their mid-twenties are taking turns in photographing one another.  Tight short skirts cling to their slim waists and hips.  Their black and grey panty hoses barely conceal their well-toned legs.  I am sorely eager to sneak a shot for remembrance.  But cowardice strangles my aspiring creativity.  

Two boys of about eighteen years of age engage the service of one photographer.  They are elegantly attired in suits and pants.  Their backdrop is the crowded lane of trees.  A hundred metres to my left in the park is the printing stall.  I decide to inspect its handiworks.  A few clients are lingering at the counter, supervising the flow of sharp pictures on the computer screen.
Seated at the table behind the counter, the shop assistant is moving the cordless mouse with one hand and typing on the keyboard with the other.  When they are satisfied with her photoshopped reproductions, she hits the print-button.  The price for a small copy is 2 RMB, which is inexpensive.  A young lady in her late twenties is taking a longer time with her selection in the next partition.  I steal a glance at her.  She is not pretty; neither is she ugly.  Working on her keyboard, the second assistant is continuously calibrating the size and toning the colours on the screen.  She is very patient with her customer.  Business is poor with the holiday season being over.  

Resonating music from a bamboo flute draws me towards a small shelter.  Ever since I first heard the famous Twelve Girls Band from China, I have been enchanted by the sweet melody of the traditional dizi.  With their effortless fingerings, flautists Liao Binqu and Sun Yuan unwittingly conveyed the impression that the dizi is an easy wind instrument to master.  Wistfully, my investment of $300 in acquiring three fine pieces in different keys proved futile; I could not produce any note, much less melody.  If I am lucky, I may receive some tips from the practitioner today, whoever he or she may be.  

A young man of about twenty-two years of age is standing, blowing his flute while reading the score sheets on the portable metallic music stand.  The animated tune is difficult to execute.  His finger movements are swift and supple.  His face is gentle, pleasant, and shrunken; he is thin, and about my height.   Is he on a diet?  The second gentleman is slightly plump with a crew-cut.  About twenty-four, he wears a red jacket, just like the ones favoured by fast-riding bikers.  His bike should be parked nearby.  I turn around.  I cannot find any.  He is the teacher.  He patiently explains the finer points and the beats.  At one point, he takes his student’s flute and transacts a section of melody in the desired pitch or speed, whichever, to demonstrate his point.  
During their break, I speak to him and he hands me his name card, black embossed with his name in silver.  Born in Hunan, Lu Wu (卢武) is a graduate of Hainan Normal University, and has been teaching dizi in Haikou for the past six years.  He started learning the wind instrument when he was eight and has been practicing for more than sixteen years.   Chen Ming comes from Henan.  He is working in Hainan but takes up the dizi as a hobby.  I explain the purpose of my Hainan visit.

At times my gibberish Mandarin perplexes Lu Wu, his incredulous look manifested when this garbled expression spills out of my mouth: “Ran hou wo qu Aodaliya, wo shi Aodaliya de ren”.  Literally translated, it is: “After I had gone to Australia, I became an Australian person.”  My intent is to say that I have taken up Australian citizenship after my migration to Australia.  My effort in communication with the locals turns out to be a disaster.  I feel deflated, and despondent.  My dream of a dizi music career is in tatters.  I should have known better; I should be contented just to sit and marvel at the ambidextrous hands of Liao and Sun on the television screen just as I sit and marvel at the flying fingers of my friend Simplicius Cheong lightly caressing the piano keys when he extemporized for a new commissioned composition in his home.  

As teacher and student resume their activities, two men and their wives stroll into the pavilion next to us.  Between the late forties and fifties, they seem like Uighurs from Xinjiang.  Their language appears to include some Malay words.  The younger man puffs on a cigarette and its fume, straying in our direction, irritates my throat.  I leave.

From the tree on my right, a wagtail descends onto the field twenty metres away.  It is joined by a common pigeon.  Another wagtail interrupts the pair.  They are foraging for food.  The wagtails are constantly wagging their tails.  Consulting an Australian bird book later, I gather that these wagtails are not identical to the Willie Wagtails frequently visiting my tiny backyard garden.  Although they look very similar with their distinctive black and white colours, they do not belong to the same family.  White Wagtails are members of the Motacillidae family while Willie Wagtails are members of the Rhipiduridae family.  Both species, however, wag their tails, hence their apt name.  Their tail-wagging behaviour remains a mystery.  Its aim, some ornithologists propose, is to flush out their prey - insects such as beetles and flies and small invertebrates such as worms and snails.  About eighteen centimetres in length, the White Wagtails are energetic; they jump and dash in short pursuit of some escaping insects, which I fail to visually detect.

My excitement increases when the dancing party is joined by a small beautiful bird, which I tentatively jot down on my notebook as a “robin”.  A few seconds later, two other “robins” fly pass and perch on the tree.  They are extremely shy.  As I creep within twenty metres, they flee from tree to post.  My effort to snap a clear photograph of them fails.  All that I can capture with my handy digital camera is a distant, tantalisingly blurry appearance of a tricoloured bird perching on the end of a thin lightning conductor attached to the shop roof.  With the exception of its black wings, a black band across its eyes, and its light-brown head, the rest of its body is painted with a distinctive reddish-brown colour.  What bird is it?

Seeing three different species of birds at the same time in the same locality is a morning treat.  These eighty-three hectares of parkland are a safe haven for rare birds, I say to myself.  Opened in January 1996, it was the labour of love of Hainan residents.  When the decision was taken three years earlier by the provincial authority to reclaim the sea, thousands of volunteers packed more than seven hundred thousand cubic metres of soil for the foundation of the land on which I am standing.  As well as their year-long effort, their donation and donation of overseas Chinese, totalling ten million RMB, realised the construction and maintenance of this downtown retreat.

Intrigued by what I have witnessed, I subsequently visit two bookstores in Haikou.  The employees there tell me that they are the biggest in Hainan.  But they do not have any book on Hainan birds, they add.  Apparently, none has been written on the subject.  A helpful assistant in one store brings me to a shelf, and plucks out a paperback edition of Chinese Bird Photography.  Written in Mandarin, it cost me 58 RMB; its images are small, averaging nine centimetres by six centimetres.  The tricoloured bird is not in it.  In desperation, I write to Professor Liang Wei (梁伟), whose name I have found on the internet.

Thanks to the generous assistance of this Biology professor and expert ornithologist from Hainan Normal University, I receive an answer, not only to the identity of this bird but also to twenty others.  The Long-tailed Shrike is one of the species in the Laniidae or shrike family found in Hainan.  Within the species called “Lanius schach” are different “races” like Lanius schach bentet, Lanius schach caniceps, Lanius schach fuscatus, and Lanius schach tricolor.  What I have observed is a Lanius schach erythronotus.  The gift of a species name magically extends my ornithological knowledge, a knowledge inspired by my friend and former National University of Singapore colleague Ho Hua Chew.

A shy songbird, a Long-tailed Shrike is a deadly predator.  Feeding chiefly on insects, it has been photographed impaling even small lizards and rodents on shrub thorns and fence spikes to tear them apart and extract morsels for its fledglings.  Only about twenty-five centimetres in length, with its tail accounting about forty percent of it, it should be renamed as Long-tailed Impaler!

Frustrated with my inability to secure a good representation of the elusive bird, I continue my stroll on the grassy field among the neat rows of leafy trees.  Since the coastline is hidden by these trees and bushes, a youth and his girlfriend, who are first-time visitors to the park, ask me in Mandarin for its direction.  For a moment I am dumbstruck.  Explaining that I am new, I whip out the map from my backpack and show them our position.  The coast is just two hundred metres ahead.  

Running adjacent to the beach is a fairly wide two-lane road.  Since it is off the beaten trail, no cruising or parked cars are in sight.  I cross.  The elevated coastal walkway is clean; the beach below is interrupted by brown ancient rocks.  The sand is coarse.  Beyond the thirty or forty-metre width of rocky beach is a narrow strip of mud.  Three ladies are scavenging for cockles or other shellfish.  The one in green shirt and pale blue trouser is dragging a blue plastic container.  Another in orange vest, with a purple jumper wrapped around her waist, is dragging a polystyrene-foam box.  The third in green shirt and purple vest is dragging a blue plastic container.  They are wearing straw hats.  With their short shovels, they dig, picking up something and dropping it into their containers.  It is a backbreaking job, one which I would have no propensity in participating.

Here I am, gazing at Qiongzhou Strait, which separates Hainan Island from the Chinese mainland.  My mind once again drifts back to the early days, to a time when the island beckoned the Yue tribe and their descendants, the Li people, on Leizhou Peninsula.  To these Guangdong natives, the uninhabited forested island enticed.  They crossed; so did many others centuries later.  The pristine green bushes, trees, plains, and hills suggested a name to the latecomers - Qiongzhou.  “Qiong” (瓊) means “fine jade” while “zhou” (州) means “land” (or “prefecture”).  Fine jade is green.  “Fine Jade Land” became one of the earliest names for Hainan.  Another was “Qiongya” (瓊崖), which means “Fine Jade Cliffs”.  The prefix “Qiong” is beguiling.  
Fine jade is expensive; it symbolises excellence.  Thus, Hainan should be an excellent island for outsiders; yet, despite the relatively narrow Qiongzhou Strait, “China’s” interest in Qiongzhou emerged only about two thousand two hundred years ago.  A historical retrospection clarifies this puzzle.  When we hear the term “China”, our instinctive conception is a vast tract stretching from Inner Mongolia in the north to Hainan Province in the south and from Taiwan in the east to Xinjiang in the west.  That is, of course, part of China’s extant boundary.  During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the country was smaller: about half of its present size.  In antiquity, the term referred to yet an even smaller area: a fifth or less of its present size.  In other words, huge contemporary China began life as a small struggling kingdom.

According to traditional historians, the word “China” is derived from “Chin”, the Wade-Giles’ romanised name for the dynasty established in 221 B.C. by a ruler who styled himself as “Qin Shi Huangdi” (“First Sovereign Qin Emperor”) and ruled until his death in 210 B.C. at the age of forty-nine.  When thirteen-year old Ying Zheng became king upon his father’s demise in 246, the parameter of the Qin kingdom was short, limited to the region now known as Shaanxi Province.  Five centuries earlier, his ancestral kingdom was even smaller, around Xi’an on the fertile loess near the confluence of Wei River and Huanghe (Yellow River).  It had been in constant conflict with surrounding petty kingdoms and ethnic tribes.  

The young king’s ambition blossomed with his maturity.  At thirty-eight years old in 221 B.C., he confidently embarked on the conquest and unification of the six eastern states.  By the end of the following year, the border of Qin extended roughly from Beijing in the north to Nanjing in the south and from Nanjing in the east to eastern Gansu in the west.  Its capital Xi’an was also the capital of preceding dynasties, including the Zhou dynasty that flourished around 1046 B.C.  Thus began the imperial age of a united Qin people (“Qin ren”) or “China”, a “China” confined to the northern side of Yangzi River.  The region south remained with non-Han tribes.

However, in 214 B.C., the landscape changed.  His generals had captured the regions now known as Guangdong and Guangxi.  Back then, these plains south of Nanling Ranges (南岭; Southern Mountain Ranges) were collectively described as Lingnan (岭南; Land south of the Mountains).  In an instant, China ballooned in territorial extent.  To prevent potential political chaos in his empire, the First Emperor had earlier abolished previous state boundaries, dividing his empire instead into thirty-six administrative “commanderies” (or “prefectures”).  Each commandery was subdivided into districts, which were further divided into counties.  With the incorporation of new territories, the emperor established the Nanhai (literally, South Sea) Commandery.

Hainan was, according to historical records, administered under the Qin as the Xiang Prefecture.  This was the earliest time the island had come under the government of “China”.  The First Emperor stocked his new territories with troops, prisoners, and political exiles.  Thus began the slow but gradual migration of “Qin ren” or “Chinese” into southern China.  Crossing the narrow Qiongzhou Strait, the few Chinese settlers became farmers, fishermen, and traders.  Until then, very few Chinese had settled in Fine Jade Land (Qiongzhou), Fine Jade Cliffs (Qiongya), or Pearl Cliffs (珠崖; Zhuya), as the island was variously called.  As late as the Ming dynasty, Hainan was termed as “Qiongzhou fu” (琼州府; Fine Jade Land Prefecture).

When the Qin dynasty crumbled in 206 B.C. as a result of the disastrous wars with Xiongnu horsemen, heavy casualties from the Great Wall construction, and corruption and despotism of its prime minister (who was regent to the First Emperor’s successor), peasant leader Liu Bang ably annihilated his rivals to establish the Han dynasty in northern China.  Earlier in 204 B.C., the Qin military commander of Nanhai Commandery seized the opportunity to form his kingdom of Nanyue (Southern Yue).  Controlling roughly Yunnan, Guangxi, the southern half of modern Guangdong, and the northern half of modern Vietnam, Zhao Tuo placed his capital at Panyu (named after the two mountains Pan and Yu at Guangzhou) on the northern tip of his empire.
Liu Bang maintained cordial relations with Nanyue Kingdom.  But after his death, relations between his successor and Zhao Tuo strained.  It was only restored when Nanyue became a subject state of the Han after Liu Heng’s ascension to power in 179 B.C.  In 113 B.C. King Zhao Xing sought a merger with the Han Empire; his prime minister Lu Jia rebelled, assassinating him and the Han ambassador.  The following year angry Han emperor Wu dispatched a hundred thousand troops to successfully conquer Nanyue.  By this time, the population of Nanyue contained more than six hundred thousand Han Chinese, including the five hundred thousand troops sent during the Qin rule.  

Hainan Island came under the Han emperor’s strengthened control.  A military garrison was set up in 110 B.C.  A decade later, the island was divided into the Zhuya and Dan’er Prefectures, which were recombined in 46 B.C. into Zhulu County.  Military security stimulated Chinese migration.  Twenty-three thousand taxable Han households were recorded during the early Han period, distributed among sixteen towns along the northern and western coasts.  Some of the early Hainan administrators were greedy, imposing heavy taxes on the non-Han natives.  The ensuing insurrections led to Chinese retreat to the small coastal strip closest to Guangdong.  By the first century A.D., new military expeditions enforced peace in northern Hainan.  As conditions improved, the population grew to more than a hundred thousand.  

This number was minute compared to the total population in the empire: 59,594,978 people, or slightly more than twelve million households, according to a census conducted by the Han bureaucracy in 1 to 2 A.D.  An interesting fact: up until the early fourth century A.D., the southern region, according to Arthur F. Wright (in his book Buddhism in Chinese History), “contained perhaps a tenth of the population of China.”  If Wright’s estimation is accurate, the region south of Yangzi River probably had a population of only five or six million.  The majority of people lived in the north because they could comfortably generate agricultural wealth from the fertile loess deposited by the annual flooding of the Yellow River.  The southern regions were inhabited predominantly by non-Han ethnic tribes.    

Following the ineffectual emperor’s abdication in 220 A.D., the Han Empire disintegrated initially into three kingdoms (best known as “The Three Kingdoms”) of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Wu, which underwent further geographical re-shaping, until reunited in 589 A.D. by the incoming Sui dynasty.  In Chinese history, this 370-year period is referred to as “The Six Dynasties” because only six consecutive dynasties are regarded as legitimate.  They are:  Cao Wei (220-265), Jin (265-420), Liu Song (420-479), Qi (479-502), Liang (502-557), and Chen (557-589).  Of all the contending dynasties, Wu, Jin, Liu Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen were based in Jiankang (modern Nanjing) on the southern bank of the Yangzi River mouth.  (Confusingly for history students, the phrase “The Six Dynasties” is sometimes used by historians to denote these six dynasties that controlled south “China”.)
 
During the third century, the Wu and Shu kings led expeditions to re-conquer the seceding southern regions of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan.  On Hainan Island, skirmishes between the Chinese and natives became frequent.  In 246, the Wu ruler sent an army to subdue the Hainan natives but more than eighty percent of his troops perished.  The Wu invaded again at the turn of the fourth century.  The northern shores near Haikou were the most likely battlegrounds of these disruptive and gruesome wars.  Qiongzhou Strait was a strait of deaths, a strait feared by many in antiquity, despite the enticing descriptions of the island facing the mainland.

Today, the Han Chinese constitutes about 84% of the Hainan population.  The majority of them are Hainanese, those who speak the Hainanese dialect.  Regarded as the standard version of spoken Hainanese, the Wenchang variant is used in local broadcast.  Although indigenous and non-Chinese speakers, the Limgao (Ong-Be) people, who form 8%, are classified by the government also as Han Chinese.  The other indigenous groups include the Miao at 0.7% and Zhuang at 0.6%.  While some tracked from Guangxi, the province adjoining Guangdong, many of the Miao were brought in as mercenaries from Guizhou during the Ming administration.  A small pocket of Utsuls, who are listed as Hui, live near Sanya.  They are Muslims, their community consisting of only around six thousand and five hundred people.  Other religious groups are not much larger.  Christianity is professed by about forty thousand residents while Buddhism by ninety thousand, miniscule relative to a population of 8.6 million.

Looking across the narrow and shallow strait, I strain my eyes to scan the green expanse of Leizhou Peninsula at the horizon.  This part of Guangdong Province is nearest to Hainan.  Alas, the translucent veil of fine mist stirred up by the cold north wind prevents my pleasure, the evaporating moisture of the warm water currents of Qiongzhou Strait coming from the Gulf of Tonkin on the west and South China Sea on the east being an ancillary cause of the fog.  Can I discern the peninsula on a clear day?  The Gulf is the maritime link for trade and communication between Hainan and Vietnam, which lies three hundred kilometres west.  Five hundred kilometres northeast is Hong Kong, only fifty minutes by air from Haikou.

As I contemplate the slow movements of the shell collectors, two elderly men overtake me.  Incongruously, a cleaner, who places two black plastic bags of rubbish near the bins, is in smart black jacket.   Bins in pairs are stationed strategically throughout Haikou, one for rubbish and the other for recyclables.  I sneak a peep into some bins.  Recycling is not widely practised.  Rubbish is often left in recycling bins.  I stroll on.

Two couples are beachcombing, checking out unusual shells or stones.  One of the women is wearing a dark-brown jumper with a hood over her head.  They may be tourists.  To my right a family of six, including a child of about five, is playing on the field of well-manicured grass.  Rain droplets lightly tickle the hairs on my head.  They are too tiny to warrant the effort of unsheathing the umbrella from my backpack.  A boy in bright-red jacket walks by, staring inquisitively as I scrawl on my notebook.  The young couple who have previously sought directions are fossicking too.  

Tall pine trees are bunched together on the roadside closest to the beach.  On the other side is a file of coconut palms.  Lamp posts are paced every thirty metres between the coconut palms.  I am amazed at the symmetry of the park layout.  As I strut, two nervous pigeons on the beach take flight.  Pigeons are usually very tame birds.  Here, they have enough human encounters to wisely escape a fate as “Braised Pigeon” on some restaurant menus.  A few mangrove saplings are sprouting near the bridge.  They are between one and one and a half metres in height.  Strangely, in front of them is a row of old burnt stumps.  Was there a recent fire?    

I balance on the short arched bridge, beholding the tall blocks of flats that are nearly ready for occupation.  Some of their owners will enjoy an unhindered view of Wanlu Park; some will front a calm sea, silently counting the crossing ships.  How I envy them.  Slightly more than a year later, during my third trip, I discover that these six-floor blocks actually belong to Guesthouse Hotel.  A night in its most expensive room set the visitor back by 798 RMB while a night in its cheapest room by 308 RMB.  

Senior Sales Manager Zhang Yu Xue (张余雪) kindly shows me around a 558-RMB room on the fourth floor.  From the balcony, I gape at the vista, which a honeymooning couple would sedately relish while soaking in the spa tub near the balcony.  At sixty square metres, this air-conditioned room is spacious; it has two separate beds facing the inbuilt television.  The shower and toilet are enclosed within a transparent glass screen.  The marble floor is partly carpeted.  A table and sofa compliment the other amenities on offer.  Born in Haikou, petite Snowy, the name on her card, has worked a year and a half before joining the hotel.

After thanking her, I stand some distance from the hotel entrance.  To my left are two restaurants: Ding Pin Xian Restaurant and Haohuang Restaurant.  Further left is a large duty-free shop undergoing renovation.  

Peering down from a bridge at the river life is always a refreshing experience for me.  Continuing my stroll, I am charmed by the fishing boats anchored near the river bank.  Some are small, about two metres in length, capable of carrying two or three fishermen.  Others are larger, about ten metres, capable of carrying more than fifty people.  A flock of thirty common mynas are shrieking on the beach.  I soon come across three coastal birds, which I later learn are Chinese pond herons.  As they extend their wings to flutter off, their white wings are conspicuous.  The back of their bodies is light-brown.  I wish more of them are here, soaring freely and gracefully.

That serene scene may vanish as the locals become wealthier.  Indulging in luxuries and finer things of life, they will speed in their tiny private yachts around Nandu Bay, leaving rippling foams behind them.  Skiers will skilfully manoeuvre and twist their boards as they glide over the choppy surface; the lone water scooter will power to achieve the fastest record; and sport fishermen will toss their rod lines over the side of their anchored platforms.  These are some of the memorable Sydney beach performances that will be replicated here in the future.  Sadly for avid bird watchers, the shy herons will flee to a quieter, undisturbed haven.  

Near the exit of the park is a small exhibition hall, which attracts a crowd.  Curiosity gets the better of me.  As admission is free, I wander in.  Clothing and dried food are on sale at this seasonal trade fair.  Three pairs of sock sell for 10 RMB ($2), which is also the deal offered by Haikou street stalls.  A packet of home-dried shredded cuttlefish cost me 10 RMB.   Unsure of its hygiene, I cautiously tasted a few strands.  The meat is lightly saltish and sweet.  It is tough, which is typical of the “oriental chewing gum”.  Over the following few days, I sample a few strings nightly, rueing not buying more.  My unrushed park trip takes more than four hours, giving me a feel of my ancestral land.  Since I like the inexpensive, yet nutritious, food at Friendly Noodle Café, I return for a quick early dinner.

Almost five in the evening, the day is becoming dark for me to travel to nearby Haikou Port.  On my return journey, Bus No. 21 is full.  After a few stops, I drop off at Mingzhu Road to catch a connecting bus.  The first two No. 34 buses are packed like cans of sardines.  Some impatient adults rush to pay the conductor at the entrance and scamper to board through the exit door.  When the third No. 34 arrives, I join the leftovers.  I am standing precariously on the exit steps.  Fortunately, the doors are shut before the bus moves off.  As they open at each stop, I excitedly dismount to make way for exiting passengers.  I dread however to live this way every day.

Peddlers are displaying their wares along the walkway in front of Mingzhu Square.  Since street vending is illegal, they adopt creative tactics in evading police seizures.  Some spread their products on a square piece of durable cloth while others on light, foldable plastic tables.  Alerted to the slightest signal of “trouble”, they seize the four corners of their cloths or shut the portable tables, thus securing their property for a timely escape.  The common items for sale are belts, clothing, cosmetic jewellery, watches, and pirated DVDs.  Three Tibetans are selling Tibetan curios like Buddhist amulet, bracelets, and rings.  Most people are just browsing, not buying.

Amidst the glittering lights of stalls and shopping centres, young touts are distributing advertisements listing available internal tours.  Carrying a haversack, I stand out like a sore thumb.  I receive a cluster of them.  Their prices are roughly identical that one is hard-pressed to make a choice.  At the corner of Nanbao Road, four or five ladies are handing out name cards.  One propositions me as I walk towards that narrow street.  She is a pretty woman, around forty years of age.  Her face is round and unblemished, and she has a friendly, charming smile.  She comes close to me, so close that our shoulders lightly touch as we walk, not from my initiative but hers.  Tenderly stroking downwards my right upper arm, she softly whispers in a mainland accent, as I weakly resist the seduction.  

“Do you want young girls?  Very pretty.”  
“No thanks.”  My gentle submission is all too unconvincing.
“Eighteen years old.  Or what age do you want?  Twenty – also have.”
“No thanks.  My wife is around.”  I try warding off the advance with this answer, thinking that it will stop her from following me.  But the shrewd lady does not fail to persist.

“Next time then.”  Handing me a name card, she points to her telephone number and urges me to call her.
Feigning to scrutinise the card, I attempt to decline, stammering, “I don’t know how to read Mandarin.”
Sweetly, with one hand, she lightly holds the trembling fingers that are clinging on to the little card.  With the index finger of her other hand on the name, she says with a smile, “Shi Xiao Mei”.
“That’s my name.  Call me.”

How many men have “fallen” - for and under her cultivated charm?  I shudder on reflection.  I could have been also bewitched.  I later flip through my pocket dictionary to determine the name of her business.  She is the owner of “Shencai Xiuxian Zhongxin”, which I translate as “Divine Energy Leisure Centre”.

Within the area bound by Haixiu East Road, Daying Street, Daying Road, and Wuzhishan Road are the back lanes of shopping centres.  They are alive from dawn until midnight.  Hawkers are offering cooked food, fresh fruits, clothing, and kitchenware.  A custard apple about the size of my two tightly clasped hands costs me 22 RMB.  At 17 RMB a jin (half a kilogram), I have paid too much to the fifty-year old plump Hainanese lady, who remains disinterested and unmoved on her plastic stool.  Her neighbour is an eager salesman, moving from tray to tray and cutting segments for me to try.  The thin, dark man from inland Chengmai speaks Hainanese with an accent that is incomprehensible to me.  My pidgin Mandarin works.

“No need to try,” I say.
“Just try.  Don’t worry.  No need to buy if you don’t like.”

How can I resist his smiles and pitch?  Fruits here are so cheap that one or two taken for sampling will not cripple his business.  Looking like a green apricot, the small fruit is unfamiliar to me.  Its firm flesh tastes like a cross between a pear and a ripe apricot.  Crunchy and slightly sweet, I later hear that it is a variety of plum (“li zi”).  A kilogram cost 8 RMB.  Rambutans sell at 20 RMB ($4) a kilogram, which is the price in Singapore.  Succulent and juicy, the twenty-five or so hairy appetisers are gone that very night.  I resolve to patronise his stall.  

Vendors at the wet market are a paragon of diligence.  They are still at work until around nine at night when they start packing their trays of fish and shell fish, slabs of beef, mutton, and pork, and assortments of vegetables.  In the polystyrene box of seawater, the eight-centimetre prawns are kicking their way around.  Fresh air is pumped through very thin tubes into the water to sustain them.  Now and again, one leaps out in a futile bid to escape.  The middle-aged fishmonger carefully retrieves it from the paved floor.  Small abalones in shells are on sale too.  The two sundry shops do not stock small kitchen knives.  Those on the brackets are slightly too big for my transitory needs.  A set of six pocket-sized packets of perfumed facial tissue cost 5 RMB, bargained down from 6 RMB.

A roadside hawker’s porcelain cups and saucers are selling well.  Two small porcelain teaspoons arrest my attention since my hotel does not provide spoons.  I pay him the 3 RMB.  A small foldable pocket knife cost 5 RMB.  I need it for cutting fruits.  Although exhausting, my day has been satisfying.


Haikou Port, busy gateway to the world


Illiteracy in Mandarin causes my misconception that Haikou Ferry Terminal is at the unembellished geometric outline resembling a horse’s head on my map.  Not knowing that it actually depicts Haikou Container Wharf, I take a No. 34 bus from my hotel bus stand on Thursday noon.  The fare for the long distance is only 1 RMB.  The bus is half-full.  

A schoolboy of about fifteen stands up, offering me his seat.  Am I that old?  To avoid causing unnecessary offense to him, I readily accept his offer.  I am deeply impressed by his civic consciousness.  Surely, it has been instilled in him since his childhood by his parents and school teachers, I say to myself.  I am proud of him, a citizen of my ancestral land even though he may be unaware of it.  

Sitting down, I hear two Hainanese ladies conversing, without any care of privacy or eavesdroppers.  “He is crazy”, one remarks.  Who is she referring to?  My ears perk and strain to catch the rest of their chatter.  But I cannot make much sense.  Like the road in front of my hotel, Longhua Road, where a secondary school is located, is busy with traffic and people.  Some teenage boys are climbing over the road divider, the one-foot iron railing hardly a deterrent.  Diagonally opposite Longhua Elementary School (Longhua Xiaoxue) is a row of old, heritage houses, about thirty metres before Longkun Expressway.  Unfortunately, I do not have the spare time to visit them.

After passing Longkun Expressway, I see a solitary dog treading cautiously along a pedestrian-crossing, as slowing cars manoeuvre around it.  I lean sideway to identify its owner.  None is around.  A law-abiding animal is a strange spectacle.  The amusing event is over before I can recover from my astonishment to record it on my camera.  A revolving restaurant sits on the roof of a tall building at the intersection of Yusha and Quoma Road; a huge lotus statue in dull-gold paint is at Yixin Shopping Centre.  At a traffic-stop, an old man in his seventies, attired in a dark blue outfit with a bag slung across his shoulder, moves from car to car, begging.  He is unsuccessful.

The bus finally terminates at Lijing Road in Haikou Wharf.  Residential blocks are on my right.  As I walk towards Qiongzhou Strait, I note stacks of containers within the port zone to my left and Deguixuan (德桂轩) Seaview Restaurant and Hotel to my right.  Making the best of my planning error, I decide to explore the section of the coast that lies between the wharf and Evergreen Park.  A Hainanese chauffeur in his early thirties is standing near his car, evidently waiting for his boss who is feasting in the warm restaurant.  He is shivering in the chilly wind.  He vigorously rubs his hands.  Since a friendly greeting does no harm to anyone, I express it and also make a trite comment on the cold weather.  He reciprocates my greeting.  And we exchange simple stories about ourselves.  He is in his job for two years.  I wish him well and bide him goodbye.
   
Crossing the short Du Juan Qiao (杜鹃桥; Cuckoo Bridge), its name and date of construction “2006” given on the stone plaque, I am aghast.  The tide has ebbed; the seawater below is stagnant and murky.  

A young couple strolls by.  They are in their twenties.  The girl wears a soft greyish round cap, and carries a bag slung across her shoulder.  Her pair of skimpy shorts ends slightly above her knee while the shafts of her white boots almost reach her knee.  Holding a transparent plastic bag of white pumpkin seeds with one hand, she randomly picks a tiny nut with another and cracks it between her teeth, and then flings the empty shell.  She is littering, I grumble.  Her boyfriend is in blue jeans and black jumper with a hood.  They are courting, unconscious of my existence.

The slender elongated park running parallel to the beach is deserted.  Near the bridge is a huge blue sign announcing:
 
“The 1st Hainan International Boat Show 2010
 2010.12.10”

A boat show was held here the previous month, and I have just missed it.  Now, that sign is the only forlorn reminder.  It is a reminder also of the growing wealth of some local Hainanese.  I later chance upon a yacht industry December 2011 report, predicting that China will have one hundred thousand new yachts over the ten-year period from 2012 to 2022, a market that is worth between fifty and one hundred billion RMB.  These project figures may seem unspectacular, except that there were only three hundred yachts in 2008, and one thousand five hundred in 2010.  In comparison, the United States of America (U.S.A.) has more than fifteen million yachts.

As I scribble some notes, two men in their forties walk by.  One is carrying a fishing rod while the other is pushing his bicycle.  
“Any fish?”  I pry.
One replies, “Too cold for fish”.

A fishing enthusiast, I believe they are simply unlucky.  They move toward the embankment, sentinelled with coconut trees, by the side of the wharf.  A forklift is hosting a pallet of cargoes onto a ship.  Some lorries move in and out of the wharf area.  I count seven cargo cranes and a container hauler at the wharf.

Walking slowly along deserted Haitang Road, I look to my right, at the boundary fence enclosing a vast plot that is undergoing development.  The occupants of the new buildings will enjoy their evening constitution on the thin strip of park by the breezy waterfront.  They will meet five tall totem poles, arranged in a circle, each carved with the heads of Li people.

On the wide path to my left are two men in their sixties.  Their bamboo rods are short and slender.  They gently swing their lines and bait into the water a few metres off.  The tiny floats dip slightly below the water surface when the fish bite and drag the bait.  The fishermen are friendly.  After my initiated greeting, we chat.  They have come to Haikou to pass their New Year holiday.  One hails from Heilongjiang (formerly northern Manchuria) and the other from Beijing.  Each has a bucketful of seven or eight rabbit fish dashing in the sea water.  They are small, only seven or eight centimetres in length.  

“Are they nice to eat?”
“Yes, they are nice to eat,” replies the Beijing man.
But from their emaciated countenance, the fish can hardly whet my appetite if cooked and served without any accompaniment.

From Shanghai, the third man has been holidaying in Haikou for the last two months.  Pointing to the new condominiums three hundred metres away, he reveals he is living in one.  He is alone.  The centre of wheeling and dealing during the early twentieth century, Shanghai is today a city of millionaires.  He must be one of those businessmen who have benefited from Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalization.  The pain of the brief Cultural Revolution is a distant memory.  He is a master of flattery.  

“You look like you are in the mid-fifties.”
Needless to say, I am elated.  Fortunately, my discretion gets the better of me.  I return the compliment, saying, “My guess is that you are sixty.”  
“No, I am sixty-eight.”  

My unexpressed intuition is correct.  He must have suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution, I silently repeat to myself.  Such words should not be uttered.  The turbulent times are best left behind.  We should not be hostage to the past: that is the attitude of most elderly Chinese.  They are right.  What has passed cannot be undone.

“Your Putonghua (spoken Mandarin) is not bad (“bu cuo”).”  

My day is made.  I can converse in Mandarin.  I pass the test.  I am exhilarated.  As I say goodbye to him, envy overpowers me.  Soon the summer holiday will be over and he will return home, leaving his flat empty, a flat that has an unimpeded panorama of the calm Qiongzhou Strait.

Many nouveau riche mainland Chinese bought winter vacation homes in Haikou and Sanya as investment, causing a high vacancy rate among residential buildings when the festive seasons are over.  A small two-bedroom apartment of eighty square metres may cost about 2.4 million RMB (or $480,000).

Two young couples in their early thirties and a young child of about four are also fishing about ten metres to my right.  Using an ice pick, one lady is loosening the stubborn shells encrusted in the dark-grey rocks to retrieve oysters for baits.  Fishing seems to be an increasingly popular pastime.

Hainan Haikou Tourist Information and Service Center is on the ground floor of a tall modern office building at the intersection of Binhai Expressway and Shimao North Road.  It is very spacious; its interior decor is fitting for a large travel agency.  Five employees are seated behind their desk.  A visitor is in a discussion with one.  The frontdoor receptionist introduces me to an English-speaking staff.  Grace Chen Ru (陈茹) is a Hainanese.

“Where did you learn your English?”
“Chongqing University”
I am surprised.  I am also curious.  “Why did you go all the way to Chongqing for your studies?”
“I want a change.  I have lived in Hainan for more than twenty years.”
“You are not running away from your mother’s nagging, are you?”  

Ha…Ha.  I laugh loudly.  Grace does not look impressed, as my attempt at levity falls flat.  Instantaneously, I apologise.  “Sorry, I shouldn’t be making fun of your mum.  So you want to experience what it is like in other parts of China?”
“Yes.”
“That’s great, to be able to see a different part of China when you are young and have the time.  When you are working, you would not have as much time.”

Grace is about twenty-three.  She has returned to live with her retired parents.  Her father was the manager of Xinhua bookstore.  She has an older brother.  

I relate my intention of writing a travel book on Hainan.  She is very helpful.  On the rack, two thick souvenir issues celebrating Bo’ao are only for reference but Grace kindly requests permission from her superior Lu Bingbing to offer me a copy.  She also selects some other pamphlets.  Armed with enough information, I thank them for their generous assistance.  (On a later trip, I learn from Grace that she is working in a bank, which offers accelerated promotion prospect.)

Haikou Port (Haikou Gang) is only a short distance away.  The No. 7 bus drops me near its entrance.  Also known as Xiuying Port, this port is not to be confused with Haikou New Port (Haikou Xingang), or one will literally miss the boat.  The latter is the place I have been to two days ago; it is situated to the right of iconic Century Bridge.  Both ports are sited near Binhai Road; they are only five or six kilometres apart.  Both run daily ferry services to Hai’an on Leizhou Peninsula every half hour or hour from six-thirty in the morning to six in the evening, the journey taking about an hour and a half.  The fare is around 35 RMB.  Ferries also head to ports like Guangzhou and Zhanjiang (in Guangdong Province) and Beihai (in Guangxi Province).  The fare ranges from 110 RMB for Fourth Class seats to 450 RMB for “Top Grade” seats.  

When I jump off the bus, my heart is pulsating with excitement.  Will I get to observe inbound or outbound ships, and cars being driven into their stationary hulls this time?  The Ferry Terminal is at the end of Haigang Road.  However, the Passenger Terminal is at the unnamed road, a hundred metres to its right.  Hawkers are selling cooked food, fruits, souvenirs, and trinkets.  The spacious car park at the Passenger Terminal is not very crowded.  

Walking through, I see two buses parked on my left and five on my right.  Of these seven buses, five are bright-green buses, one is a bright-blue bus, and one is a white bus with two blue diagonal stripes on the sides.  In the terminal itself are more than a hundred departing passengers.  Many are seated in the security zone, waiting for boarding.  Their bags vary in sizes, shapes, and colours.

Not forgetting my intention, I immediately leave the arrival-cum-departure hall in search of a vantage platform.  Fortunately, a gate with grate is located on the left side of the ferry terminal.  A young man is standing there, looking towards the sea.  I join him.  Later another man arrives and talks to him.  They are waiting to farewell their friend or relative.  

Thirty metres in front of us is a waiting ship.  Its hull is revealed, indicating its readiness to receive motor vehicles.  The wharf is crowded with employees giving directions to passengers.  I am in time to witness the last lot going on deck.  The huge door of the hull shuts.  My excitement is dented; I miss the episode of heavy vehicles entering it.  The ferry slowly slides off from my sight.  I peek at my watch: 5.45 pm.

If Qiongzhou Strait is not buffeted by strong seasonal gales and heavy rains, the passengers will have an uneventful voyage.  Annually, the channel is closed to cross-strait ferry services for a few days.  July and August are the typhoon months.  In December 2002, ferry services were suspended for two days, and approximately six thousand five hundred passengers and eighty-eight vehicles were stranded in Hai’an.  

When services are cancelled, no refunds are given for pre-purchased tickets.  I suppose it is an “Act of God”, akin to insurance companies’ refusal to pay for flood damages to one’s property.  I walk off with a mixed feeling.  I gain a great satisfaction, having succeeded in my aim; yet I have a heavy heart.  Is my deep yearning to see departing ships a cathartic phenomenon of my suppressed childhood memories of leaving Hainan by this route?

Haikou’s crowded streets

Jo will land at five in the evening today, a Friday.  Since Cai Hong will be picking me up only at four, I will have time to learn more about the buildings across Haixiu East Road, starting at noon.  Running parallel to this main road is Daying Road, three hundred metres apart.  Two short streets - Nanbao Road and Daying Street - lead to it.  

In broad daylight, the litter from the previous night’s activities is evident along the narrow back streets.  Fruit skins, thin wooden skewers, wrapping papers, chicken or pork bones, and spilled food may trip the unsuspecting pedestrians.  Fortunately, a street sweeper is engrossed in cleaning up the mess.  Many old cars are parked on the sides of a street, and one has flat tires.

A China Post branch stands at the intersection of Daying Road and Nanbao Road, fifty metres from the laundry I discovered the previous night.  The laundry owner is a slim young lady in her mid-twenties from Hebei.  Mrs Zhu’s charge is 6 RMB for an article such as an undergarment, a blouse, or a pair of jeans.     

Sales and repair of electrical household goods is the predominant business along Daying Road.  New and used electric fans, fridges, sound systems, television sets, and small tools are tightly piled up in some shops, each being limited in size and space.  Two internet cafes are near each other.  Backstreet cafes are usually places where I hesitate to have my meals; but it is lunch time, and I will never know the hygienic quality of the food if I am not adventurous enough to taste it.

My doubt somewhat allayed by that persuasive hypothesis, I enter Shui Xiang (Fragrant Water).  The counter faces the road.  Behind it are three young girls between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three.  The youngest girl is short, about five feet.  She is dark and has a round face.  She is not beautiful; neither are the other two girls.  Apparently, the customer before me has provoked her and she is complaining in a loud tone to her colleagues.  I cannot grasp her point.  Two waitresses are nonchalantly lingering in front of the counter to deliver the customers’ orders and clear the tables.

Language incompetency restricts my choice of food.  I take the only way out; I point to a dish on the billboard behind them, and ask if it is chicken-and-duck rice.  After the angry girl has cordially confirmed, I order it.  I forward no further questions, fearful that I might provoke her too.  The price is 12 RMB ($2.40).  It is cheap.  I sit at the front table, facing the road.  Three cars are parked close by, their fronts facing me.

When my attention is distracted, the big and relatively new white Volkswagen quietly glides off, without offering me the opportunity of looking at its owner.  Is the owner a man or a woman?  Is he or she well-garbed?  Is he or she young or old?  The answers should enable me to form a hunch of the relative wealth or poverty of the residents.  The dull-maroon JMC jeep seems old, ten years in my guess.  Its fender is worn out, and two patches of paint have been scrapped off, the result of accidents.  It is its owner’s faithful servant.  A bright-maroon car moves in and takes off after ten minutes.  Its insignia is an “L”, a Lexus, I think.  It is new, two or three years old.  I curse myself; again, I miss an inkling of its owner’s personality.

A taxi pulls into the vacated lot.  The driver is in his early thirties.  He goes to the counter, makes his order, gets a small paper cup of free white tea, and then occupies the seat in front of me.  Facing me, he is sipping from the cup, puzzling over my notebook recordings.  I should have spoken to him, and elicit his life story.  Unsupervised, a young cleaner is sweeping the street.  She wears a red cap, a nose mask, and a red-and-yellow vinyl safety vest.  With her long broom, she flicks the dirt into her large dustpan, improvised by nailing a wooden handle onto the bottom of a square biscuit tin that has sections of its sides trimmed off by a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters.

A newspaper lady approaches to sell the afternoon daily.  When I decline, she moves on to another customer.  On my right are two tables, one occupied by two boys in their early twenties in the middle of their lunch.  One is clothed in brown jacket and a pair of faded-blue jeans and white shoes; the other in black jacket, black pants, and white shoes.  Each table is surrounded by five blue plastic chairs without back rest.  The setting is spartan.  Behind me are seven Formica-laminate tables in the narrow walkway.  The Formica chairs are well-worn but with back rests.  Each table seats two persons.  One of these is occupied by two young men.

My tray arrives.  The bowl is big; the serving of rice is generous.  The rice is sprinkled with tiny cubes of prickled radish, a combination that titillates my taste buds.  The tiny cubes are crunchy, sweet, and tasty.  The elongated plate contains five slices of chicken meat and five slices of duck meat.  On one end is a fair amount of boiled chye sim (a vegetable).  The chicken meat is tender and not overcooked.  It is even better than the famed Wenchang chicken.  The soup is tasty, containing seaweeds and strands of scrambled eggs.  I wallow in my bargain.  In my estimation, the same set at a Singapore hawker centre would cost me at least 35 RMB.  

After finishing, I walk inside, on the pretext of using the facilities, to inspect the place.  As it is occupied, I wait, sitting near the amenity door to jot down my observations.  At the back of the café is one long table, occupied by six young well-attired persons.  Around each of the three other tables are four persons.  Three ladies at one table start to leave.  The waitress, whom I initially mistake to be someone waiting for her friend in the washroom, is about twenty-five.  She has a short ponytail; her jumper has the big words “Tex Tron” in front and “Intercity” behind.  The toilet is fairly clean.

Wuzhishan Road is only a hundred metres from the café, at the east end of Daying Road.  Reaching it, I turn right.  Walking another hundred metres, I cross the road and enter into Longshe Road.  It is a narrow lane in the midst of very old dilapidated buildings.  Startlingly, many balconies, even those on the third storey, are caged, which gives me a shiver.  Is it a signal of a high crime area?  The sensation is scary because I do not know what lies beyond.  The middle-aged roadside stall owner sells pirated DVDs of Hong Kong dramas and titbits like small packets of sweets and biscuits.  Interestingly, she has a portable DVD player, which screens a movie series that enthrals two potential customers.  The ladies in their forties are making comments about the plots.  I interrupt, enquiring the cost of an AAA heavy duty battery and then buying twelve for 12 RMB.  Feeling reassured by their presence, I continue straight ahead without hesitation.      

Thankfully, I emerge at the northern end of busy Haifu Road.  Two shops stock CDs and DVDs.  The prices of Hainanese opera DVDs range from 18 RMB to 85 RMB.  Naturally, the more expensive copy features famous Hainanese singers and orchestras.  Not knowing any singer or storyline, I select two of the cheapest ones at random.  I also enquire about CDs or DVDs of Hainanese songs.  The sales girl, who does not know Hainanese, produces a DVD of songs by a male singer with the same surname as me – Feng Lei (冯磊).  I take it.  

“Do you have any CDs or DVDs by Hainanese female singers?”
“There is none,” she replies.  
“But I have heard songs from one female Hainanese artiste.”  
“What is her name?”

I cannot remember.  I ask her to find out from her colleagues if there is any female Hainanese singer.  Taking my request as an insult to her knowledge of the range, she impatiently insists that no female Hainanese’s songs have been recorded in CD or DVD.  When I later return to Australia, I check my music collection.  The cassette tape of Hainanese pop songs was released several years ago by Han Xian Ling (韓仙羚), who went by the stage name Feng Fei Yan (凤飞燕).  She hails, however, from Singapore.  Her lively rendition of “Graceful Pace” (步珊珊; Bu Shanshan) from the Hainanese opera “Princess Baihua” (百花公主; Baihua Gongzhu) was downloaded on YouTube by a Hainanese blogger, Richard Foo.

Chastened by the shop assistant, I meekly carry my selection to the cashier.  Including a sales tax of 5 RMB, the bill is 80 RMB ($16) for four items: a documentary DVD about Hainan, two VCDs of Hainanese operas, and a DVD of Hainanese songs.  Not too expensive.  Happy with my purchase, I slowly return to the hotel via Haixiu East Road, passing East Lake (Donghu) along the way.

Cai Hong and her husband are punctual.  Travelling along the Haikou Ring Expressway (Haikou Raocheng Gaosu) at four-thirty, their car breaks down two kilometres from the airport.  Water is leaking from their six-year old car.  Xue Xin gets down and manages to hail a cab.  The cost is 13 RMB.  

Departing as scheduled from Changi Airport, Jo also enjoys her short flight.  Although the overhead screen in the Meilan arrival hall shows the landing of three other planes around the same time, her quick exit reveals again the efficiency of the custom staff.  

With a borrowed car, Xue Xin drops the three of us off at the hotel, apologising for not joining us for dinner.  He is preparing for his Yunnan trip the following day.  After unloading the bags and luggage, we explore the make-shift stalls across the road.  Dinner at a restaurant specializing in Sichuan dishes cost Cai Hong about 300 RMB.  

After she has left, Jo and I make our way to Haikou People’s Park.  I am eager to show her the dynamic life in Haikou.  Loud Mandarin music and songs are reverberating from the fringe.  We walk up the short flight of stairs.  She is delighted to see separate groups of people from their mid-thirties to the elderly practising different styles of Western ballroom dance like foxtrot, tango, and waltz to the rhythms from their own Hi-Fi sets.  It is something unusual to her.   
 
We zoom in on the group perfecting the cha-cha-cha.  The participants are in their fifties and sixties.  They are uninhibited, flowing gracefully despite the attentive gaze of spectators.  They were about sixteen or seventeen years of age when the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.  Many of them would have undergone the horrors of that era.  They are now doing the very thing that was once severely prohibited.  We watch them; then we move on.  A couple in their late forties is practicing the complicated steps of the waltz.  Occasionally, their instructor interrupts and conveys some fine tips.  Why are they learning ballroom dancing at their age?  The third group of thirty people is perfecting their line-dancing skill.  The loud music is infectious; I sway to the different beats.

The free pastime for residents provides entertainment for tourists like us.  When venues for entertainment are few and expensive, people resort to self-entertainment in public places like beaches and parks.  We wish to linger on but our bladders are bursting!  





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