Rambling around my ancestral Hainan

Chapters 9 & 10
Page 301 - 342


Chapter 9:

East Coast - From Wanning To Lingshui

 
The cab lady’s quotation of 10 RMB to Qionghai Train Station is fair since it covers a distance of two kilometres or so.  As I wind down the window to snatch a breath of fresh air, our vehicle passes some workers who are struggling to cap a burst pipe.  A light spray of clean water splashes onto my face, which brings laughter to the motorcycle pillion passenger near us.  I smile at her.  Amazingly, her hands are clutching her large suitcase that balances precariously on the little seat space behind her.  I would not attempt that dangerous stunt to reach the station.  The older rider is probably her sister.  

I barely manage to catch the 11.14 am Haikou-to-Sanya train, which stops at Bo’ao after five minutes and at Wanning within twenty-two minutes.  The fare to Wanning is only 17 RMB ($3.40).  The distance from Qionghai central to Wanning central is about sixty kilometres.  Initially travelling at one hundred and seventy-five kilometres per hour, the train accelerates to two hundred and thirty kilometres per hour, entertaining its patrons with a kaleidoscope of green meadows, low undulating brown hills, and seemingly unpopulated village houses with grey roofs.

At Bo’ao Station is a scenic lake.  A farm with hothouses flies by.  I turn my head.  These hothouses are small tunnel-like tents built close to one another.  Their long metal frames are covered with white plastic sheets to retain heat and moisture for germinating seeds as well as protect the seeds and saplings from predatory birds.  According to the internal digital screen on the train wall, the exterior temperature is thirty-four, and at times thirty-five degrees Celsius.  With air-conditioning, the interior is, however, cooler and comfortable.  Few seats are unoccupied.

Sitting near the exit but diagonally opposite to me on the other side of the aisle is a young lady in blue demin short, matching short-sleeved shirt, and a pair of high heels.  She smiles at me, and I reciprocate.  In addition to her backpack and a yellow plastic bag, she has in front of her legs a white bulging gunny sack filled perhaps with clothing.  My mind wanders.  Is she able to carry her cumbersome load?  Should I offer to help her?  On second thought, I have my own luggage and two backpacks.  Furthermore, I am in my sixties, no longer young and muscular.  My magnanimous intention melts away.  She should be okay; she has been so far.  The train rolls on.  Soon I will be in unfamiliar territory.


* Wanning Train Station *
万宁火车站


As I grapple with my belongings down the flight of stairs to the Wanning station exit, a young staff member in uniform kindly assists me.  She cheerfully carries my suitcase down, there being no escalator.  Am I that old?  She has gone beyond her call of duty.  After going through the turnstile, the young lady heaves her heavy sack onto her left shoulder and squat to retrieve her backpack and plastic bag.  Helpless, I can only smile and say to her in my pidgin Mandarin:  “Hen li hai.  Ni you hen duo li.”  (“Very great.  You have great strength.”)  She smiles and slowly trots across the one hundred-metre courtyard to the waiting buses and cars.
 
The design of the courtyard is similar to the courtyard designs in other stations, except for the landscaped patches of flowers and trees.  That the trees have only been recently transplanted from the nursery is evident in the loose coconut husk-fibre layers wrapped around their lower trunks to protect them during transportation.

Near the exit is a small colour-bond shed housing the Hainan Wanning Tourist Information Center.  Inside, an extrovert Hainanese lady gives me some pamphlets and a map of the city.  The shed is only a provisional office, she says.  In reply to my query, she recommends Wanning Hotel.  Its name in Mandarin is Wanning Da Jiu Dian.  “Big” (“Da”) is not in the English name of the hotel.  Waiting near the roadside stalls, a motorized trishaw driver quotes 6 RMB for the trip to the hotel.  I offer 4 RMB, which he rejects.  


* Wanning Hotel & February-Flower Grand Hotel *
on Wanzhou Avenue
万宁大酒店和二月花大酒店在万州大道


A girl in her late twenties offers to take me for 5 RMB.  Reaching Wanning Hotel, I ask if she is willing to wait to take me to another hotel if that one is too expensive.  She is willing.  However, I check into the hotel because the daily rate is 160 RMB, which is not too far off from the 128 RMB in the three preceding cities.  Giving her a 1-RMB tip (20 cents), I enquire if she is willing to drive me around the city for an hour for 30 RMB.  She is willing.  I quickly deposit my belongings.  She proves to be a good guide, telling me the names of the various features and stopping for me to take photographs.
 
People’s Park is 1.2 km north of Wanning Hotel.  A further six hundred metres is Xuri Hotel.  In its nearby suburbs are new attractive condominiums, some occupied while some almost ready for occupancy.  Built close to one another, they are surrounded by a common boundary fence that precludes unwanted guests.  Their clean facades with modern designs are a sharp contrast to the older jaded monotonous buildings within the small town precinct, which consists of a few main roads heavy with traffic and people.  Who are the wealthy owners of these posh flats?  Their cost would be prohibitive.  An hour later, the girl drops me off at my hotel.

As I study my map after lunch, an elderly Hainanese pauses and probes.  He is helpful, telling me to catch a bus at the “new bus station” (xin che zhan).  He then indicates the direction.  Since the map does not show the existence of a station, the information is puzzling.  Fortunately, a trishaw approaches, and he instructs the driver.  On reaching, I re-check my map: it is about two and a half kilometres north of Wanning downtown at the corner of 223 National Road and 432 County Road.  After a ten-minute wait at the corner with no bus stop, I wave at the advancing bus.  To my relief, it stops.  The cost is 4 RMB.  

***********
Wuchang coastal village,
12 km east of Wanning downtown.
乌场沿海村庄位于万宁镇以东12公里处

**********

Wuchang, the nearest accessible coastal village, is twelve kilometres east of downtown.  The journey takes half an hour.  I arrive at three in the afternoon.  By the side of the road, the large sign “Wuchang” cannot be missed unless one is sleeping.  The visible village consists of about a hundred houses on both sides of the road.  Only a handful of inhabitants are around, and they barely notice me.  The food stall operating from a wooden house has no customer.  A bottle of soft drink costs 4 RMB.  Village life here seems sedate.

 Between some houses are short paths that lead to the bay, where seven or eight fairly large fishing trawlers are anchored about one hundred metres off the shore and near a jetty.  The sea is obviously deep.  In the middle of the bay is a group of exposed rocks.  On one is a house, its owner perhaps a fishing family.

Much of the five kilometres of beach that is observable by me is covered with tall bushy trees, propagated to break the strong force of gales blowing from the sea.  Household debris and flotsam are strewn along the shore closest to the houses.  To my chagrin, I later hear that the bays and beaches slightly further from Wuchang are spectacular.  They are less populated, and hence less contaminated with manufactured junks.  Only five kilometres north of Wuchang, Yingwenhai (英文海; literally, Superior Gentle Sea) Beach is on the peninsula facing the South China Sea.  Bai’an Island, a scenic islet, is four kilometres off its shore.  If only I have prior knowledge, I would have taken a bus ride there instead.

Weighing more than a hundred kilograms, a pregnant sow is slowly scavenging among the debris.  The upper half of its body is covered with black hairs while its lower half, bereft of hair, is pink.  Its breast and four pairs of nipples, sagging from its swollen belly and almost touching the sand, are unusual.  As it advances, I prudently step out of its way, afraid - needlessly - that she might squash me with her heavy weight.

* Wuchang seashore, marine life  乌场海滨，海洋生物 *
Wuchang, local Hainanese 万宁区乌场，本地海南人

Crustaceans are abundant.  A few crabs, each about three centimetres from side to side, are scurrying across the sand and into their holes.  With a sadistic streak, I manage to grab hold of one to give it a fright and then let it spring off my hand.
 
Two teenagers of about fifteen or sixteen are fishing while a young girl, presumably the girlfriend of one, is watching.  Inquisitive, I approach to inspect their catch.  Together, they have filled their bucket with many small trumpeters and breams the size of about ten centimetres, one every few minutes.  The shallow water is rich with fish, although small ones.  These are occasionally sun-dried as salted fish.  On a table beside a house, one family has left many dehydrated pieces on a square-metre of wire mesh for further airing.  Cured fish, cuttlefish, duck egg, vegetable, and so forth are loved by Chinese.

In their shorts and hats, two young men of about twenty-eight arrive on their motorcycles and wade into the waist-deep section.  Unfurling their short seine nets, one shortly hauls his, showing nothing.  Uninhibited, he proudly flexes his arm muscles, and cheerfully urges me to photograph him.  Perhaps he thinks that I am a blogger, who will bring him instant internet fame.  He is chewing betel nut and his teeth are stained.

Leaving at five in the late afternoon, I encounter more people.  Adults and children are returning from work and schools.  I do not have to wait very long for the bus.  Reaching the “new bus station” at five-thirty, I slowly walk back and discover a laundry diagonally across the road from my hotel.  The cost for washing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt is 10 RMB.  Individually, the cost for a pair of jeans is 6 RMB while that of the T-shirt is 5 RMB.  It is reasonable.  The owner, a young girl in her mid-twenties, is enterprising, giving a discount for bringing the two items together.
 

Dongshanling and the mutton dish
 

Entrusting my clothing to her laundry at nine-thirty on Wednesday morning, I then catch a motorized trishaw to Dongshanling (Eastern Mountain Ridge), located three kilometres east of Wanning town.  The fare is 7 RMB.  I give her 10 RMB because, at my behest, she stops twice along the way for me to photograph the surroundings.  

Near the mountain, the scenery is beautiful.  The flat plain is green with vegetable farms and pockets of trees.  In their communal field, about nine tiny figures in groups of two and three are bending, doing something different.  Are they ridding out the weeds and weak seedlings?  The road is wide for two cars but not heavy with traffic.  Every five minutes, a car, truck, motorcycle, or trishaw passes from the opposite direction.

No pedestrian is walking.  The sky is bright-blue with some patches of moving white clouds.  A flying small brown bird perches on the power line ahead of us for a minute or two and then flies off again, frightened by our looming presence.

An ornate technicoloured entrance archway that is topped with three simulated houses and their traditional Chinese bright-brown tiled curved roofs welcomes visitors to Dongshanling.


* Dongshan Ridge decorated archway *
万宁东山岭牌楼
 

In Hainan, a spirit of generosity is common among older folks.  The entry fee is 25 RMB for seniors and 50 RMB for others.  Hearing I am a foreigner, the middle-aged receptionist still offers me the seniors’ rate.  I show her my Australian driving licence, which has my date of birth.  The chairlift ride costs an additional 20 RMB, which is a uniform fare.  Worth the price, the open-air two-seater chair brings me to the mountain top.

Dongshanling consists of three ridges, covering almost nine square kilometres.  The highest point is one hundred and eighty-four metres above sea level.  Some of the formations are like pencils when viewed from afar, hence receiving the sobriquet of “Penholder Hill”.  

On the way up, I am blessed with an unobstructed view of Wanning town far behind me.  Almost nearing the peak, I face a tall white statue of an elderly scholar with a beard reposing on one of the famous rocks on my left.  His hands are placed behind his back and his hair is tied into a bun on his head.  Blissfully, he presides over the sprawling town.  Who is he?  Is he Li Gang, the first Southern Song chancellor exiled by emperor Gaozong?  Did he have the opportunity to climb and view the scene that is here before his surprising recall?

Gliding slowly over the canopies of shorter trees while taller trees are rushing by on both sides of my chair is so exhilarating a sensation that it blots the question from my mind.  The rocks are interspersed with trees, shrubs, and wildlife.  On the faces of some huge rocks are Chinese calligraphic characters, which were some of the two hundred poems and stone carvings left by scholars since the Tang dynasty.


* Scenes from Dongshan Ridge *
风景从万宁东山岭
 

Butterflies are fluttering around the peak.  Some are floating from bush to bush to sniff out nectar from the early blossoming flowers.  Some tourists are wandering, readying their cameras to capture a memorable picture.  Much of the peak has been cordoned off as danger and conservation zones, leaving a small area for perhaps two or three hundred spectators at any one time.  From a clearing among the trees, the extent of Wanning town becomes clearer.  The open green space surrounding it offers fresh invigorating air to its inhabitants.  They are lucky.  

After filming some scenes, I ride the cable car down to the mid-point of the mountain, where a red Buddhist temple is located.  Chaoyin Temple is one of the three temples, the other two being Dongling Temple and Natural Stone Temple, spread out on the ridges.  In front of the main entrance is a courtyard from where I appreciate a clear view of the distant town.  However, I cannot see the South China Sea, which is not too far off – about three kilometres in the opposite direction.  Perhaps if I walk around the bend to the other side, I may catch a glimpse.

Some banyans with characteristic hanging roots, overarching branches, and large leaves provide ample shade to the few visitors sitting on the stone benches arranged around their trunks.  A wooden sign states, also in English, the age of one: “100 years old Chinese Banyan”.  The simple unembellished teahouse at one corner offers refreshment at reasonable prices.  Hovering around the entrance of the small temple is a group of tourists, about sixteen of them, shepherded by their guide with a loudhailer.


 **********
Friendly local Hainanese students  友好的当地海南学生
 **********


Walking down the flights of concrete stairs, I run into two friendly girls from two different groups.  Each asks me to take her photograph, without even enjoining me to send them a copy.  Needless to say, I am flattered by the deference I muster!   Leaving them, I take the left route at a fork.  Weathering over the millennium has left many harder rocks standing on the mountain slopes.  On them were craved some huge cursive characters in prominent red.  Some of them are obviously poems and tributes.  Unable to decipher their meaning, I can only stare in disbelief at the stylish calligraphy.

Part of the top of one huge cylindrical rock has a diagonal crack, giving the impression that it is on the verge of slipping off upon a gush of wind.  The sign at its base has an English translation of its name: “Live Stone”.  Unedited, it further volunteers:

“Live Stone, also called immortal stone, was the place where the King of the Sea enjoyed the cool.  It is relatively huge, shakes with wind blows, stone can be shook by pushing it.  It was famed that ‘Going upon the live stone would lengthen life to a hundred years’.”  


**********
Live Rock, stepping on it will increase your lifespan by 100 years!
万宁东山岭活石, 踏上岩石将延长100年的寿命!
 **********


No thanks.  I will not be standing on that precarious stone.  This is, however, not the rock that has been made famous in the novel The Dream of the Red Chamber.  That gigantic rock of some ten metres in height rests on another hill top nearby.  When the wind blows, it sways but does not topple off.

A seven-metre bronze-coloured statue of a sitting, smiling Buddha (佛雕像) is on a clearing.  With his robe sliding off, the plump Buddha exhibits his pot-belly and drooping breasts.  His lips are painted red and his ear lodes are long, the latter a symbol of his wisdom and patience in listening to the constant stream of woes from sufferers.  A young lady in T-shirt and a pair of jeans is lighting her incense sticks to embed them in a small censer by his side.

Before long I have reached the bottom of the mountain.  It is easier to gravitate down the steps than climbing up.  Since it is inexpensive, I decide to purchase another cable ride up to the mid-level to explore the right route at the fork.  Descending that route, I see the “No. 1 Hill” and also another moving rock, the latter pointed out by the security guard upon my enquiry.  This two-metre flat rock has apparently a solid foundation.  Encouraged by him, I clamber up after him.  He jumps, and it moves.  I repeat the action.  Perhaps my jump is more vigorous.  The motion scares me.  I quickly slide down.  

“What are the chances of it being toppled over the mountain flank during a typhoon?”
“It is unlikely,” he replies.  Still, I am not taking any risk.

I hear many birds, chirping and singing.  But I do not see them.  Neither do I meet any goat that may end up in the famous “Dongshan Mutton” dish.  These sure-footed animals reportedly munch the wild tea leaves and greens growing in the vicinity.  A famous tea, the zhegu tea (also known as lingzi cao), is brewed from these wild tea leaves but I have no idea of its taste or aroma.

Except for the tourist coaches, no bus runs from the foot of Eastern Mountain Ridge to town.  Seeing no trishaw, I decide to walk instead of waiting for one.   

Unexpectedly, an empty pedicab arrives.  The driver from Hubei wants 10 RMB for the ride to town.  Along the way, he offers to take me to Xinglong Coffee Factory for a total of 60 RMB, which I foolishly accept; for when we reach Niulou Village at the intersection of 223 National Road and 304 Provincial Road, he drops me off, claiming he does not know the way to Xinglong Coffee Factory despite our agreement.  When I hand him a 100-RMB note, which is a further mistake, he returns 30 RMB, claiming that the 60 RMB is the fare from Wanning town to Niulou Village.  After my protest, he hands me another 5 RMB.  Short of my destination, a fare of 65 RMB for an hour ride is far too exorbitant.  He has cheated me.

Rouge drivers prey in almost every country, causing grief to travellers.  A seventy-year old driver parked his taxi across the road from my lot, instead of in front of my lot, for a longer route to the airport.  I would have rejected his service but for the fact that I had a plane to catch.  He has been in Australia for more than fifty years, coming in his twenties after the war from Greece.  His fare came to A$37 for a journey of less than ten kilometres.  My return fare two months later was only A$26.

I should have taken a bus from downtown to Niulou.  Its fare should be less than 10 RMB because the distance is only about fifteen or sixteen kilometres.  At Niulou, I am greeted by a man standing beside his motorcycle.  He cites a fee of 50 RMB for three different places, which is a reasonable rate.  His bike is fitted with a large umbrella that shades both of us from the sun.  Not accustomed to sitting on such a motorcycle, I am occasionally careless and the umbrella spokes lightly stab my forehead, and fortunately not my eyes.  


**********
Hainan Tianya Rainforest Museum
海南天涯雨林博物馆
**********


My first visit is to Hainan Tianya Rainforest Museum.  In her late twenties or early thirties, the receptionist has been rudely aroused from her nap by my call and she is in a foul mood.  Because her dark office prevents me from clearly discerning her face, I compound my blunder when I politely, but mistakenly, address her as “Da Jie” (“Big Sister”).  I further aggravate the problem by seeking the entry price for seniors and not understanding the meaning of “shenfenzheng” (identity card), which she demands.  

“Shenme shi shenfenzheng?”  (“What is ‘shenfenzheng’?”)
She must be thinking that I am trying to be funny.  She repeats her request.  “Let me see your shenfenzheng.” (“Gei wo kan ni de shenfenzheng.”)

I turn to Ah Zhong (阿忠), who digs into his pocket and shows me his identity card.  When I show her my Australian driving licence, she screams.  Her outburst is atypical and rare.  Most service persons in Hainan are fairly polite.

“Concession fare is given only to Chinese citizens, not foreigners.”

That is fair enough.  I wish that proviso is clearly stated somewhere.  That would have saved us from some ugly exchange.  50 RMB is inexpensive for foreigners with stronger currency exchange.  But for locals, the admission fee is expensive.  Because time is short, I hastily walk around the garden.  There are many trees and plants but, unfortunately, they are not accompanied by explanatory notes.  The miniature museum is interesting; it holds some pieces of driftwood of different shapes.  They have been vanished and given fanciful names.


Xinglong Coffee best in the world 

(兴隆咖啡是世界一流的)


Xinglong is the district where waves of overseas Chinese from Indonesia and Vietnam have resettled since the nineteen-fifties as a result of persecution in their homelands.  For example, two thousand Chinese came in 1960 when they were forced from their Indonesian homes while five thousand Chinese came following the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.  In all, about twenty-five thousand overseas migrants started agricultural enterprises here with virtually nothing, except their skill and determination.

They nurtured rubber trees and, during the waiting period of at least five years for maturity, they also cultivated coffee berries for short-term returns, the coffee and rubber seeds being imported from their former homeland.  Coffee bushes now occupy more than four hundred and fifty hectares of land.  To their satisfaction, the soil conditions were ideal for coffee and tea, which later became important export items.  In 2010, Xinglong produces forty tons of coffee beans, one-tenth of Hainan’s annual production.

Xinglong ERAN Coffee Factory (海南省兴隆咖啡厂) is a white six-storey modern building.  At the car park are seven or eight coaches.  Crowds of tourists are streaming into the building.  The fragrance of roasted Xinglong coffee permeates the entrance of the factory.  I follow them in.

Looking lost in search for the ticketing office, I am stopped by a security guard, who explains that admission is only for tour groups, not for individuals.  I apologise.  When I explain my purpose, he refers me to his superior, who in turn refers me to a senior security officer at the gate office.  Sympathetically, the latter assigns a young security boy to escort me to the ground-floor showroom.  

Along the corridor of the showroom is a series of posters about the factory and its products.  I have a quick glance, eager to move on to learn the art of roasting and grinding coffee beans.  Beside the posters is a tall and slender shelf on which is displayed six bottles of coffee beans of various varieties and also sets of teapots, cups, and saucers.  As photography is not permitted within the premise, I struggle to jot down important facts before they fade from my memory.  

The first room discloses the roasting technique.  In a round metallic container with a diameter of about two meters and a height of half a metre, a rotating rod with blades churns the beans for even scorching.  So this is the recipe for coaxing the essence of coffee beans!  So simple, yet so heavenly is the aroma.  According to the youth, this is replicated by identical machines in the factory upstairs.

Later, my mother tells me that coffee beans should be best roasted with maize and sugar.  She says that she has witnessed the process being done by some stall owners in Singapore.  The taste of coffee made by those supersaturated beans is sweeter, and the smell is more fragrant.  The proportion of maize and sugar to be added is naturally a trade secret.

In the next room is a set of pancake-making machines.  Scoops of coffee-flavoured dough are first spread on the open plates and then flattened and baked by the shut heated lids.  When they are hot, the extremely thin pancakes are easily folded (or rolled); and, when they have cooled, they turn crispy and brittle.

Tiny samples for tasting are handled out by a promoter.  In the name of research, I sample two pieces to get my description right!  They are lightly sweetened.  Because they are almost paper-thin, they melt in my mouth.  They should serve as useful titbits during an afternoon tea with friends.  

Coffee powder is packed to specific weights in the third room.  On the corridor wall adjacent to this packing room are a framed photograph and posters depicting several award certificates.  The security officer points out the owner.  Probably in his forties, the successful entrepreneur is rubbing shoulder with some leading politicians.  His factory was built in 1952.  Initially selling only one type of coffee, it now offers even a variety for reducing hyperlipemia.  Its coffee beans were once manually dried; now, they are being treated mechanically.  

Chinese leaders like Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Hu Jintao have visited Xinglong and praised its coffee quality.  In June 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai stamped his imprimatur during a visit: “Xinglong coffee is a top grade in the world.  I have tasted many types of coffee from around the world.  Xinglong coffee is the best.”
 (周恩来总理说：“兴隆咖啡是世界一流的，我喝过许多外国咖啡，还是我们自己种的咖啡好喝。”)

At the end of the corridor is a fairly large shop selling the company’s products.  Within that limited space are two or three hundred tourists.  After their purchases, some sit around the tables, sipping their cups of fleshly-brewed world-renowned coffee while relaxing or waiting for their friends to finish their shopping.  According to my escort, one to two thousand visitors pass through its door daily.

Two ladies are serving small plastic cups of hot coffee from two different bean varieties.  The “Pure and Taste Arabica Coffee” is thick, sweet, and also slightly bitter.  A canister of powder weighing three hundred grams sells for 38 RMB.   The “Fragrant Coconut Coffee” is sweet and its coconut flavour is strong.  Fantastic.  A tin canister of identical weight costs 39 RMB.  The shelves stock all sorts of coffee and biscuits.  In fact, there is even coffee chocolate.  Two varieties of whole beans are exhibited for sale.  A jin (or half a kilogram) of one variety costs 78 RMB; a jin of the other costs 68 RMB.  Grinding is free of charge.    

Coffee drinking took off locally.  Sold in both canisters and plastic packets, the powder is affordable, and the preparation easy.  All that is needed is a steel kettle of water for boiling the cloth sieve that holds the powder.

Since local demand outstrips supply, Xinglong coffee is a scarce item abroad.  Although unknown internationally, its flavour is comparable to the flavours of Brazilian and Columbian fine coffee.  The factory now has branches in Guangxi, Shanghai, Yunnan, and Xiamen.

Resisting the temptation of acquiring a few cans, which will hamper me, I thank my escort, who kindly directs me to the garden adjoining the entrance car park.  I am permitted to photograph the coffee plants here, he says.  I have been quizzing him earlier about the plants - some fifteen of them - that I have seen within the building’s glass-enclosed courtyard.

Coffee plants were first cultivated in Hainan in 1935 by Chen Xianzhang (陈显彰).  Born in 1889, the Guangdong native went at the age of eighteen to work in Indonesia.  An enterprising man, he became prosperous, owning four coffee plantations and several shops during his sixteen-year residence.  In 1933, he returned home.  Fortuitously, he met a Hainan official, who persuaded him to consider coffee cultivation in the island.

Examining the conditions in different parts of Hainan, Chen found the Fushan region (福山地方) of Chengmai county (澄迈县) ideal.  It has abundant rainfall, an annual average temperature of twenty-three degrees Celsius, sufficient sunshine throughout the year, and rich volcanic soil.  Thus, he re-located his family from Guangdong and established the Fumin Farm (福民农场) with the four sacks (about two hundred kilograms) of Robusta coffee seeds which he had collected from Indonesia.

Chen’s business survived the ravages of the 1937-1941 Japanese occupation.  In 1950, his farm had eight hundred mu of land under cultivation.  Besides crops like rubber, lemon grass, Java cassava, and banana, it had 12,500 coffee trees, 6,450 saplings, and 30,000 sprouts.  Today, Fushan Coffee is one of the leading coffee producers in Hainan.

During my 2013 trip, Xue Xing and Cai Hong drive me to Fushan Coffee Cultural Centre (福山咖啡文化中心) at the Duncha Interchange of G98 Hainan Ring Road.  As we enter the estate, I am struck by its spacious layout and four life-size bronze statues.  Spread around a fountain, they depict a local man, who is frying coffee beans in a huge wok, and three local ladies, one carrying a cane basket of coffee beans, another carrying a long stick to pound the beans in the basket at her feet, and the third carrying a tray of coffee pot and cups.

Obviously new, the buildings are spick and span.  The museum entertains us with photographs of Chen’s family and packages of coffee beans.  An interesting trivia I garner from a page of information on the signboard: Chen has five wives, thirteen sons, and six daughters.  Visitors may rest at the coffee café to enjoy their cup of freshly brewed coffee.

But we have had our cups of Arabica and Robusta coffee, replenished constantly by the waitresses at the picturesque outdoor café of Houchen Coffee across the G98 expressway earlier.  Set beside a small pond of kois in the midst of a large field, the coffee house offers a serene view of the surrounding forest of trees.  Surprisingly, we encounter a group of twenty visitors from Ghana.  Specialising in rubber cultivation, they are researchers on study attachments in Haikou.

Patiently waiting, Ah Zhong then brings me to the Xinglong Tropical Botanical Garden.  Located about twenty kilometres west of Wanning central at the foot of mountains, and close to both Nanwang Reservoir and the sea, it provides the combined benefits of fresh air and open space to the residents.  Opened in 1957, it has a research institute, which assisted the new Overseas Chinese in selecting the right type of coffee berries for cultivation in Xinglong.

The botanical garden occupies about three hundred and forty thousand square metres (or three hundred and thirty-three hectares) of land and has more than one thousand two hundred species of plants like breadfruit tree, cocoa tree, pepper vines, eucalypt, and teak.  These specimens are representative of the trees found throughout Hainan Island.  Some of the plants are rare species in danger of extinction, and many have economic and medicinal potential.

An hour’s run through the park hardly does justice to its beauty but I must move on.


Showcasing Xinglong Overseas Chinese

(海南兴隆华侨旅游经济区)
 

Our final stop is Xinglong Overseas Chinese Town, eight kilometres south of Niulou Village.  The road nearer to the town is wide and clean.  New buildings have been constructed in anticipation of more tourists.  The entrepreneurs may be rewarded.  The normal admission fee to the park is 151 RMB.  Without being interrogated on my age, I am offered the discounted 121-RMB rate.  Even though the entry fee may be steep, about twenty-one persons in their late twenties or early thirties are milling near the entrance ticket office.  Unlike me, they arrive in tour coaches.

Descended from generations of Chinese in Indonesia and other neighbouring countries, the industrious new migrants built the Southeast Asian park to illustrate and reminisce over their lifestyles in previous homes.  Burmese, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai wooden houses (“Villages”), positioned around a stagnant lake, are open for inspection.

With a ringed neck, the Burmese lady sitting on the steps of one of the huts is grumpy, shutting her eyes when I attempt to photograph her.  In contrast, another native lady sitting on her chair in the next hut is smiling.  She wears a black dress with three bands of bright colours - blue, pink, and light-red - on its lower half.  Her head scarf is dark-red but her teeth are blackened.

On the site is a huge gold-painted statue of a smiling low-ranked Thai goddess.  Only the upper half of the deity is depicted and, as visually unsettling as medieval gargoyles, she has three faces and seven long arms.  I visit the amenity room.  It is clean.  On the wall above the wash basins are two framed pictures.

One is a photographic poster showing the lateral view of a girl sitting on her bicycle and looking backwards.  Her skirt has been “accidentally” hooked up by a fishing line, thus exposing her bare buttock.  The first two lines read: “She came from nowhere.  And nobody knows her name”.

Like the Rubin’s Vase-Face illusion, another ambiguous picture has the title “What’s on a man’s mind”.  On first glance, the contour of the drawing shows the side of a man’s, perhaps Abraham Lincoln’s, face.  But on my re-inspection, it also reveals a naked woman.  The management is no prude!

A sheltered stage features Indonesian dances like the candle dance, coconut shell dance, fan dance, and umbrella dance.  In colourful costumes like the kabaya and sarong, the dancers gyrate gracefully to the fast strumming of the guitar and vocal of the individual and group singers.  At the end of the show, a beautiful dancer obliges the audience; she poses with them for photographs.

Beginning with a cup of sweet Xinglong coffee and watching tourist participation in a “snake” dance as they line behind one another and dance to the beat is a wonderful way for me to end the day.  It is almost half past five in the evening.  

Without the trishaw drivers and motorcyclists who travel along routes not regularly serviced by buses, I would not have been able to reach many interesting places within a day.  Without them I would be waiting and waiting.  Unfortunately, I do not have time to visit the Xinglong Hot Spring Scenic Area.  With its mineral water at an average sixty degrees Celsius temperature, it is popular with locals and tourists.  Its water is piped into rooms of nearby hotels like Xinglong Hot Spring Hotel.  

Depositing me at Niulou Village, Ah Zhong kindly advises on the specific bus to take.  The fare, if my memory is correct, is 8 RMB.  It brings me to the heart of Wanning town.  My expenditure of about 400 RMB for the day of adventure is not too extravagant.

 
Lingshui (陵水),

recent international spotlight

 
Composing the southeastern region of Hainan Island, Lingshui Li Nationality Autonomous County is home to Lingshui Air Base and the 8th Division of the People’s Liberation Army Navy Air Force (PLANAF).  The airbase made international headlines in April 2001 when an American EP-3 spy plane from its Okinawa airbase was forced into an emergency landing after a collision with one of the two Chinese J-8 fighter jets about one hundred and ten kilometres from the Hainan east coast.  Smaller in comparison, the Shenyang interceptor from Lingshui airbase split and fell into South China Sea and the ejected pilot Wang Wei was missing, presumed dead after a fruitless air and sea search.

The American crew of twenty-four were detained and interrogated for two days before being sent to Haikou, where they were interviewed by U.S. diplomatic officials.  They were released ten days later only after a letter of apology - for entering China’s airspace without permission and for causing the pilot’s death - was issued by the U.S. government.  The collision occurred within China’s exclusive economic zone under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.  China is a signatory while the U.S. is not.  Whether foreign military planes are permitted to operate within China’s exclusive economic zone without its permission is at issue.  The U.S. government insists that their spy planes are free to do so.  The damaged spy plane was on a mission to gather radar frequencies and radio traffic from Chinese military installations.

President George Bush sent a personal note of condolence to the pilot’s widow.  China refused permission for the damaged spy plane to be repaired and flown out of Hainan.  Thus, it was dismantled and transported back by, ironically, a Russian cargo plane, the largest cargo plane in the world.  The pilots involved in the collision were honoured by their respective governments, one for his “heroism” in manoeuvring and safely landing his craft and the other for being a “Guardian of Territorial Airspace and Waters”.  

Lingshui is my destination.  Its main town straddles both banks of Lingshui River (陵水河), six kilometres northwest from the river mouth.  Lingshui’s coastal region consists of flat plains while its inland consists of mountain ranges with heights of at least a thousand metres.  This county is sparsely populated, having in 2010 slightly more than three hundred and twenty thousand people.  The majority of them belong to the Li (Hlai) ethnic group which, at almost fifteen percent of the general population, constitutes the largest minority in Hainan.  

At Wanning Railway Station, a teenager of about nineteen or twenty has been behaving suspiciously.  He has been loitering behind me.  He carries no bags or luggage; he is not a traveller.  Fortunately, my backpack is padlocked, except for a pouch in which nothing precious is kept.  If my memory is correct, that pouch remains zipped before I board the train.  But after disembarking in Lingshui, I discover that it has been unzipped.  Either it has been tampered with by that teenager or it has been tampered with by the young man occupying the seat facing me in the train.  The latter might be rifling through my backpack pouch while I am focussing my camera on the fields and plantations.  My maternal niece and nephew have earlier warned me about these petty pickpockets in Wanning and Lingshui.  They are annoying but harmless.

Lingshui Train Station (陵水火车站) is about three kilometres north of downtown, and the trishaw fare is 8 RMB.  In downtown, I err, booking into the first hotel.  What I should have done is to have a prior agreement with the lady operator to take me to another hotel if the first is unsuitable for my needs.  At the hotel entrance, two girls are waiting for a three-wheeler.  The three-storey budget hotel at the main Jianshe Road cost 80 RMB a night.  I am allocated a room on the ground floor.  Perhaps I will stay for the night and change to another hotel the following day, I say to myself.  

Leaving my belongings, I then walk along the main road to explore the town.  It is a small country town.  Although the street is six-lane wide, the traffic is light.  Only two motorcycles and three trishaws are moving, and fewer locals are visible.  Some cars and vans are parked in front of the urban buildings, many being four-storey.  A seven or eight-storey building is in the distance.  After a quick lunch, I examine my map.    

Li’an (黎安) is twelve kilometres by road southeast of Lingshui central.  It is located on a peninsula, the eastern section of which faces South China Sea while the western section faces Li’an Bay.  Theoretically, I should be able to compare my perceptions of the two seas.  Seeking directions from a few persons, I encounter an elderly Hainanese man of about sixty-six.  He lives near that coastal town; he accompanies me to the bus stop at the corner of Jianshe and Jiefang Road.  This northern part of Lingshui downtown is alive with people and stalls selling food and fruits.  They intrude into Jiefang Road, effectively turning it into a road with two lanes.  But it is unmarked, thus slowing down the traffic.  Motorcyclists and trishaws are weaving their way around the jaywalkers.  Some trishaws are waiting for passengers.   

The fare to Li’an is 3 RMB in the bus that has the capacity of ten seated passengers.  Bearing sixteen persons and six large baskets, it travels along Jiefang Road, which soon joins the wider 661 County Road.  Except for the crowd, the ride is pleasant and two passengers shortly alight at the nearest village.  The bus then passes a mountain range and green fields that lie on our right.  Crop rotation is evidently practised here because the slightly raised rows of soil unveil varying shades of green, reflecting different vegetable varieties.  Four persons are working in a chilli field.  The country road becomes bumpy.  Along the way, three more persons alight, leaving eleven passengers.  

At Li’an town, the shore of the bay is practically inaccessible because several brick houses are built near the tidal edge, some extending even into the sea.  Thus, the length of beach left between these houses for me to stroll is negligible.  I would not wish to swim in the sea either; for its water is contaminated.  The small brick building on concrete stilts two metres from shore is, I suspect, the public toilet.  The beach is strewn with glass bottles, tree trunks and branches, plastic sheets of all colours, old bricks, and discarded broken bricks from construction projects.  It is an eyesore.  The stretch in the distance appears cleaner; its sand is white.

Li’an Bay is home to many fishing boats and trawlers.  I count about a hundred.  They are anchored throughout the bay, some nearer to the shore.  A five-metre boat slowly steers and stops two metres from the site where I stand.  It has a crew of five, all males.  Four are workers, whose ages range from twenty to thirty.  Their large straw hats shading their shoulders, their gloved hands unload thirty bales of seaweeds onto two pontoons made from discarded polystyrene foam boxes netted tightly together.  When they have completed the task, they jump into the water and drag the pontoons to the beach.  A small truck materialises and carts them away.  Often served in hot soups, seaweeds may be pickled and served cold.

Intending to see the scenery at the peninsular tip, I walk along the narrow and solitary road lined with houses but it is deserted, except for an occasional passing pedicab.  Despite my desire to venture further, I stop, concluding that discretion is better than valour (or the better part of valour).  I am carrying 12,000 RMB, the equivalent of at least six months’ wages for an average employee in Hainan.  I have no desire to be robbed at this juncture of my adventure.

Re-studying my map, I note that Fenjie Zhoudao (分界洲岛; Boundary Island) roughly marks the northern border of Lingshui County.  This hilly two-hundred metre long islet is about eighteen kilometres northeast of Lingshui town.  I should have gone there instead.  Two kilometres off the coast, it looks like a saddle because the ridge consists of two hills about one hundred metres in height.  The isle is popular with tourists.  A ferry ride from the jetty should take only fifteen minutes.

Chiselled by grit blown from wind and waves over the ages, the cliffs on the eastern face of the ridge are spectacular.  They are advertised on tourist brochures.  In contrast, the western face of the ridge is gradual.  And the flora and avian life is said to be flourishing.  A narrow strip of white sandy beach surrounds the island.  The water is translucent with corals and tropical fish.  As the tide ebbs, the crabs surface from their burrows, scavenging for food.  Shells are abundant.  These are all evidence of a pristine environment.  Alas, I miss out on this unspoilt part of Hainan.

Beside the bus stop is a coffee shop, where twenty or more people, mostly middle-aged men, are sitting around their tables, noisily gossiping.  The tea house is a unique Chinese and Hainanese institution, just like the English pubs where workers congregate after work to bond and share their joys or woes.  Here the farmers or fishermen exchange ideas and tales of bountiful or poor harvest over a cup of coffee or tea before commencing their new day in their farms or at sea.

As I linger, I ponder over the open-air stage built on a concrete platform ten metres from the beach.  I suppose the residents here celebrate the traditional festivals with not only boisterous modern song-and-dance but also classical Hainanese operas.  This dramatic art is, however, in danger of extinction because fewer local children are absorbing the dialect at home, especially when they are expected, in line with the modern school curriculum, to excel in Mandarin and English so as to effectively communicate with foreigners and globalising Chinese from the mainland.

Opposite the stage is a small temple.  Without any big shop or shopping complex, life here is quiet and tranquil.  The bus soon arrives.  I hop on.  Heading to town, it carries nine passengers, including an old lady with two baskets of mussels for sale in the urban market.

At the end of my journey, I enquire about the nightly rates at Yijingwan Hotel, an eight-storey hotel with a magnificent view of Lingshui River.  It is situated at the corner of the main Jianshe Road (223 National Road) and Binhe South Road, the latter running beside the river.

Flowing under the bridge, this river is approximately one hundred metres in width.  At the riverside walkway, a recent construction, some people are fishing.  I approach and look down into the river and I am impressed; the water is clear and clean, without flotsam or debris.  I decide to try my luck in fishing since my reel of fishing line is in my daypack.  I return to the shops and stalls along Jiefang Road for fresh prawns to use as bait.

A shop proprietor points the direction to the nearby market.  I am pleasantly surprised that the market is still open, especially when it is almost evening.  Stalls selling cooked food like roast pork, roast duck, Hainan chicken, and intestines stand between stalls selling raw meat like pork and poultry.  Here, the residents are obviously immune to cross-contamination.  Fresh seafood and vegetables are on sale too.  However, only one stall is selling prawns, and they are large Tiger Prawns.  For 10 RMB ($2), the young lady, to my astonishment, hands over half a kilogram.  $4 for a kilogram of large Tiger Prawns!  At that price, I could be eating prawns daily.  In Australia, it would cost at least A$15.

“If only I have some cooking utensils, I would be frying them for a delicious dinner,” I lament silently.  

Along the section of walkway that is under the shade of the bridge, about twenty navy trainees and their leaders are amusing themselves during their break.  They range from eighteen to thirty years of age, the older ones probably being the instructors.  They came in three small boats, each capable of seating about eight persons.  Some are smoking and talking.  Some are playing card games.  One of them has a short seine of about three metres in length and one metre in height, which he throws and retrieves occasionally.  The fishes he caught are tiny – about five centimetres in length.  Seeing my plastic bag of prawns, he asks if I have a spare plastic bag.  I give him one, which he uses to keep his catch.  After an hour, I have not hooked anything.  In disgust, I gave him the bag of remaining prawns.

Back at the budget hotel, three or four mosquitoes are buzzing around the room, reinforcing my reservation about spending the night there.  I decide to move.  The receptionist offers a mosquito coil to repel the pest.  But I do not want to risk malaria infection, especially when I have barely completed half of my trip around Hainan.  Mosquitoes can be a nuisance here, I now realize.  I have anticipated their presence in the central highlands, where any unattended vassal is a breeding ground.  As I volunteer to forfeit the whole sum paid earlier, the receptionist generously offers to refund me half.  I cheerfully decline.  What, in my mind, is 40 RMB?  It is only $8.  

At Yijingwan Hotel, I get the room on the fourth floor that overlooks the main Jianshe Road, the bridge, and Lingshui River.  Even though the traffic is slightly heavy with buses, cars, trishaws and pedestrians in the day, the noise quietens towards the end of the evening.  I sleep soundly.  My mosquito and malaria phobia has dissipated.  The price of about 150 RMB per night is a small sacrifice for that.  
 

Macaques lord over Monkey Island, Xincun

(新村南湾猴岛; 在岛上，猴子是国王)
 

Nanwan Houdao (南湾猴岛; South Bay Monkey Island) was established in 1965.  At one thousand hectares, it is China’s largest nature reserve for Chinese rhesus monkey.  The name “Monkey Island” must be taken figuratively because there is no physical island.  The two thousand and five hundred Guangxi macaques live as an “island”, as an isolated colony on the hilly tip of Lingshui Peninsula facing Xincun (新村; New Village).    

The peak of the ridge is about one hundred and eighty metres above sea level.  With a life span of twenty-five years, the monkeys feed on buds, fruits, seeds, and invertebrates in the reserve that is rich in wildlife.  Indeed, this reserve is home to approximately one hundred kinds of animals and almost four hundred species of plants.  With ample food supply, these pampered monkeys are living in a primate paradise.

Monkey Island reserve is located about ten kilometres south of Lingshui town.  Visitors with ferry or height phobia may shuttle by car or coach along the circuitous and remote country road to the park.  Most, however, take the shorter and interesting route: travelling by car or bus to Xincun and change to the cable car.

As directed by the receptionist, I stand in front of the hotel entrance.   But no bus stand or shelter is there.  Nervously, I strain my eyes towards the bridge.  Not long after, the bus arrives.  Numberless, it has three destinations, one of which is Xincun, printed in Chinese on its windscreen.  I quickly wave.  As more than twenty-five people are packed into the bus, I sit on the square platform beside the driver, sharing it with three other persons, including an old lady of seventy-five.  The fare is 4 RMB.  

On the way out of town, some passengers drop off as some board.  Along 223 National Road, the view on my right is scenic: the undulating mountain range and the lush green grasslands.  Occasionally, the road narrows.

After thirty minutes, the bus stops at a roundabout before turning left into 23 Provincial Road.

On a spur of the moment, I follow some passengers down.  Some of them then wait nearby, perhaps for the bus to Sanya, which is about sixty kilometres southwest.  I am about two kilometres from my destination, and I have sufficient time since it is only ten-thirty on the Friday morning.

23 Provincial Road is an old two-lane road with no dividing line.  Some shallow potholes have dented one section, evidence of its heavy usage.  Soil subsidence has also done the same along a short stretch.  On both sides of the road, coconut trees stand in straight lines.  And there are no houses nearby.

At the corner of this road and 223 National Road is an unkempt pasture where nine cattle are scattered.  Nearer to the road, the black bull is securely fettered to a stake with a rope running through its nose.  He looks ahead, his two sharp horns on his head pointing backwards.  Further away, the brown cows and calves may roam freely.  But they are rapt in feeding on the luxuriant green grass.  The bull is indifferent, not stirring even as I walk close to photograph its profile.  These creatures are a lovely sight to behold.  

Trudging along the main road, a brown bull heaves a see-through cart, an ingeniously fashioned framework of welded iron pipes that balance on a pair of old car tyres.  Two of the upper pipes extend to the sides of the bull and are tied to the yoke pressing upon its neck.  The heavy skeleton supports a large wooden plank on which is seated an elderly man and his wife, both wearing straw hats.

On that slow-motion locomotive, the lady fills her time repairing a piece of clothing while her husband guides the bull through a rope tied to its nose.  A pedicab and a motorcyclist overtake, providing a stark contrast between the old, transitional, and new worlds.

Lying almost parallel to 23 Provincial Road is New Port Avenue (Xingang Dadao), a new road.  Between these two roads, about ten metres apart, the government has created a long and narrow park, a park that has initially arrested my attention.  The aesthetically arranged ornamental palms of various heights, tall native trees, shrubs, beds of flowering plants, and mown grass lawn manifest an interesting tender care of a hosing gardener.  Xingang Avenue is a four-lane road, marked in the middle by only a neat row of young coconut palms.  The roadside walkways are paved with brown tiles, also conscientiously arranged in a symmetrical pattern, even though few pedestrians may pause to admire the handiwork of the workers.  Sadly, I do not have the time to walk further.

I return to 23 Provincial Road, and proceed to the next bus stop.  Near it are three buildings.  Two display signs with English translation: “Lingshui Li Nationality Autonomous County People’s Court” and “Lingshui Xincun Haisheng Aquatic Products Refrigeration Factory”.  What the latter does is beyond my comprehension.  Is it a seafood factory?

A bus soon appears.  As it terminates about two hundred metres from the cable car station, I have an early lunch at a local stall, where the owner enlightens me on the fare - “2 RMB is sufficient” - for the pedicab ride to the station.

Including the cable car ride to Monkey Island, the admission fee is 163 RMB, which may be expensive for locals but reasonable to me.  The journey across the two-hundred metre channel is breathtaking.  The destination seems to be the summit of the peninsular knoll.  I am fortunate.  Being the only occupant of the carriage allows me moving space to shift for vantage view, especially when a vast floating aquaculture market and industry appear below.

Words cannot describe my experience of that bird’s-eye view of the beautiful blue-water bay and countless fishing boats and contiguous cages of captive sea lives.  The inhabitants, including a large community of Hakkas, living in Xincun are lucky.  The cable car ride takes me over the hill and then descends to the entrance, a distance of two thousand one hundred and thirty-eight metres.

Monkeys romp freely in the park.  Near the entrance, I photograph a pregnant mother and her two youngsters.  She is placid and contented, sitting there quietly.  Feeling thirsty, I purchase a bottle of maroon-colour grape drink at a drink stall.  After sipping half, I stow the plastic container in the right pouch of my backpack, which I carry in front of me as if cuddling a baby.  A few minutes later, I fish it out and unscrew its cap.

Meanwhile, Pregnant Mum, now walking nearby, notices and runs towards my hand.  Intuitively, I swing my hand behind my back; and she swiftly follows the bottle.  When I immediately re-position my hand to my chest, above my backpack, she leaps onto my backpack and attempts to snatch the bottle.  In panic, I instinctively release it.  She dashes off with the booty into the nearby shrubs.  Hiding behind a short bush, she punctures a hole with her sharp teeth and gulps its sweet content.  (猴子偷了我的一瓶葡萄味水。)

Beholding the unfolding drama, a bemused tourist relates that the primates here have acquired a taste for flavoured drinks, ignoring bottles of transparent plain water.  The monkeys are evidently not “monkeys”; they have grown wiser, distinguishing brand labels and colours.  Indeed, here at the park, some have been trained to be crowd entertainers.  The three different performances reveal their agility.  The first is the Guard of Honour; the next is the balancing act; and the final is the comical show.  

At one in the afternoon I watch the second and third show.  A monkey balances itself on the back of a white goat, which nimbly treads across an ordinary rope tied to two poles.  Demonstrating its innate skill, the goat even makes a turn.  I can now understand how wild goats are able to survive among the steep slopes of inaccessible mountain ranges.  The Comical Theater offers eight performances daily, the first at ten past nine in the morning and the last at five in the afternoon.  The intervals between shows are approximately an hour.

Before the start of the show, some tourists surge forward to pose for photographs with the monkeys for a charge of 10 RMB.  Silly people, I remark to myself.  At the end of the comical show, I too join the rank of silly horde.

Macaques have brown fur, their adults showing red faces and rumps.  Attaining maturity at six, a female may produce up to ten young during the course of her life.  This species of monkey is used in research.  In the wild, they are very shy.  But here, they are accustomed to human presence.  The sharp snapping of branches signals their presence.  The reward for one is a banana, which a tourist offers.  Boisterously, some of them play among the branches two metres above my head.  Some are even swimming in the small swimming pool.  The tourists are busy, gawking and photographing.  In their natural environment, macaques have been recorded swimming effortlessly for more than a kilometre.  

As I walk along a path, I glance at an adult male lying in a prone position near a hedge while two youngsters are searching through the furs on his back for ticks.  A few minutes later, he sits up.  Amusingly, he fondles his penis until it is erected.  The organ is long, thin, and pink in colour.  The youngsters sit nonchalantly.  I cautiously quicken my pace in case he is signalling his territorial rights through his quirky action.

Fifteen healthy mango trees are the objects of my envy.  They are protected within a small enclosure at a section of the park.  Drooping from the branches, the purplish-green fruits are about to ripen, inciting my mouth to salivate.  Pensively, I linger, wishing one would miraculously drop before my feet.  The monkeys are lucky; they will get to enjoy them.  Spending almost three hours in the park, I depart with much regret, but learning that man and monkey can co-exist.  

In New Village, the narrow road is hemmed with shops and hawker stalls selling drinks and trinkets.  Jo has hinted at chains of pearls dangling around her neck.  In a shop with showcases of pearls, a string of perfectly round milkish-white pearls costs 2,500 RMB (about $500).  I thank the proprietress and promptly exit.  The lady in her thirties at one of the roadside stalls is friendly and patient with her windowshoppers.  I walk over and examine her lots spread on the table and hanging on a wooden bar.  After some hesitant bargaining, I decide on two strings, one which is white in colour costing 95 RMB and the other which is slightly pink costing 85 RMB.  They are cheap because the pearls are not perfect or round.  But they are genuine.

Pearl lady is friendly; so I enquire about the existence of pearl farms.  Lingshui and Wanning have an average temperature of about twenty-four degrees Celsius, sufficiently warm for pearl formation.   Many have closed down, she reveals.  That is unfortunate because Hainan has advanced pearl breeding technology.  For example, the Sino-Japanese Nanhua Pearl Breeding Company formed in 1984 was producing beautiful pearls two years later.

At the end of the short road, a ferry man offers to take me on a tour of the nearby aquafarms.  The cost of the thirty-minute ride, which extends to forty-five minutes, is 150 RMB.  We step onto one of the stationary platforms, each about forty metres in length and ten metres in width and holding several submerged cages of marine life.  (我正在新村渔场周围乘船游览。)

Emerging from his small hut at one corner, the owner-operator lifts up a turtle for me to photograph.  In one cage are a huge grouper and two other smaller groupers.  Between three-quarter of a metre and a metre in length, the former can barely move around.  The second platform is a floating restaurant.  Customers walk around the cages and indicate the fish they fancy.  Armed with a long net, an assistant will scoop and weigh it for a quote.  If they agree on the price, it will be cooked and served.  

Basins of shellfish are displayed.  Ah, I suppose the cook will get to keep whatever pearls she finds when she prises open the oysters before the cooking begins.  

Hainan was known in antiquity as the land of pearls because pearl gathering was an important part of its economy.  (海南在古代被称为珍珠之地。) As the story goes, a native visiting the mainland was freely dishing out a pearl to every person he met!  Believe it or not, even the island assumes the shape of a teardrop pearl.  Perhaps I should live here for a year, cast a net, and snare a handful of oysters to cautiously extract their precious black pearls?  I smile, this time at my greed.


Chapter 10

Heart of Hainan, Wuzhishan

 
Defined as landforms with heights of more than two thousand feet (which is six hundred and ten metres) above their surrounding environment, mountains cover 25.4% of the land area of Hainan Island; and, defined as landforms with heights between one thousand feet (three hundred metres) and two thousand feet, hills cover 13.3%.  Next, terraces cover 32.6% while coastal plain surrounds the remnant 28.7%.  In brief, Hainan Island is generally hilly.

With a coastal plain ranging in width of between one and nine kilometres, the island’s outline is about one thousand five hundred kilometres in length, some sections curving as the fifty or so indented bays.  More than half of the coastline consists of sandy beaches with gentle gradients.

The mountains are found in the centre and south.  Eighty-one peaks along the central mountain range are higher than nine hundred metres above sea level and six are more than one thousand three hundred and fifty metres (1.35 kilometres) in height.  Compared to the highest mountains in mainland China, these are dwarfs.  The highest is, of course, Mount Everest in Tibet with a height of 8.84 kilometres above sea level.  On the border of Qinghai and Xinjiang, Kunlun Mountain stands at 6.86 kilometres high.  In Yunnan, Meili Snow Mountain is 6.74 kilometres.  Even Mount Taibai in Shaanxi towers at 3.76 kilometres.  

    
Pulsating soul of central mountains and forests
 

Until recently, Wuzhishan City was called Tongshi or Tongzha District.  In the centre of the lower half of Hainan, this mountainous region of one thousand one hundred and sixty-eight square kilometres is the “lung” of the island.  The annual rainfall of between 1800 and 2200 millimetres, average temperature of twenty-two degrees Celsius, and radiating river systems ensure that thick forests blanket eighty percent of the region.  The air quality is rated as one of the best in the world.  

Rich in biodiversity, the territory is also home to the Li and Miao ethnic minorities, who retreated when Han migrants flooded into the northern districts from the mainland, especially after the fall of the Song dynasty.  The ethnic minorities were not the only one who sought solace here.

When the 1912 Chinese republic collapsed, the lack of a strong central government saw a loose control over Hainan.  Local warlords began exploiting their compatriots.  Inspired by the communist movement on the mainland, local victims organised themselves into similar groups, which later clashed with the KMT troops.  By June 1928, just one hundred and thirty of the three thousand indigenous Communists survived.  They too escaped to the central mountains.

After ten months of hardship and further clashes, only twenty-six were left, becoming the nucleus of new recruits, who later confronted the invading Japanese army that slaughtered a substantial section of the population.  With the aid of the Li people, the local Communists, some three hundred of them, resorted to guerrilla warfare.  Their achievements were depicted in The Red Detachment of Woman.  One of the eight films approved by Madam Mao (Jiang Qing) during the Cultural Revolution, it was, together with the Red Lantern, shown in January 1971.

Following the Japanese surrender in September 1945 to China, then under the KMT’s tenuous control, Hainan Island struggled through a renewed civil war.  By May 1950, Feng Baiju and his band of local guerrillas and mainland Communists had captured Hainan, and the island was placed under the administration of Guangdong Province.  While many liberators returned home, some remained, marrying local residents.  Because of the U.S. economic embargo on China for its aid to North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, these former soldiers were employed in rubber plantations, helping to dramatically uplift the rubber production from almost two hundred tons in 1950 to seven hundred and fifty tons in 1957.  

Wuzhishan is the highest mountain in Hainan.  Located in the central highlands about one hundred and forty kilometres southwest of Haikou, it is aptly named because its five peaks resemble the five upright fingers of an open hand.  The highest peak is one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six metres above sea level.  The main town nearby is Chongshan, the capital of Wuzhishan City.  It lies about twenty kilometres southwest of Wuzhishan’s peak.  This mountain is sacred to the Li people.  The mist enveloping the mountain tops, frequently shown on tourist brochures, amazes tourists and local alike.  I must climb the mountain, Hainan’s soul, and feel the pulsating heart of gliding mists and swaying primeval forests, I remind myself.

Breezing into the Lingshui bus terminal, I just miss the Saturday 9.50 am bus to Wuzhishan downtown.  I scramble up the next bus, which departs at eleven, thus wasting an hour.  It is a light-green bus with dashes of navy-blue colours and words of its company.  The fare is 18 RMB.  There are nineteen seats: six rows with two seats, one back row with five seats, and a seat each beside and behind the driver.  Buses here bound for destinations like Haikou, Wanning, and Qionghai.

Seventeen passengers, one of whom is a boy, are in the bus, which has no air-conditioning facility.  It is warm, and my heavy backpack is on my lap.  My luggage is tucked behind the driver’s seat, among some passengers’ bags and boxes.

A gentleman sits on my right, his large round iron plate, the base of some heavy equipment, on the aisle by his side.  Nodding off, his head constantly dips and crushes my uncomfortable shoulder.  Frustrated, I conjure ways of rousing him, including shifting my sitting position, jerking my arm, and sliding the backpack strap down my shoulder.  

After an hour and twenty minutes, the bus briefly stops at Baoting bus station for passengers.  The station is evidently old; for the ground is stained grey from petrol spillage and tyre track marks.  Parked in the shelters are three red buses, a green bus, and a white bus, all with their backs towards me.  Their destinations are printed on their back windows.  The red buses are going to Sanya; the white bus is going to Haikou.  I cannot, however, figure the characters on the green bus.  The luggage door of the Haikou bus is open.

The journey of about fifty kilometres is long and tiring, although warding off the nodding and inclining man, together with the laughter and chatter ten minutes earlier of a large gathering of about a hundred people enjoying their Saturday lunch, distracts my mind from boredom.  The open-air “restaurant” at the edge of a field consists of about fifteen portable tables around which are cheap plastic chairs without arm or back rests.  Coming mainly on their motorbikes, which are parked close by, the patrons sat under the shade of multi-coloured nylon sheets tied to poles.

Five or ten minutes after leaving the bus station, we pass through a modern part of Baoting town.  On the strip of beautiful park between the pathway and the canal on our left stands a long brown Chinese-style pavilion.  On one end of its inclined roof sits a big brown bottle gourd statue, a metre or so in height, an ineffaceable reminder of the agrarian and Chinese influence of this county.  This quaint structure interrupts the monotony of my ride.  The canal is almost dry.  Much effort has been expended in beautifying its banks.  On the gentle slope of green grass are dark Mandarin characters - or slogans - spelled out by short flowering plants selectively laid out in their beds.  

Even the street lights are creative works of art.  Painted with alternating strips of purple and white, lamp posts along the bank are camouflaged as lotus stalks.  On their tops are artificial large purple lotus flowers and green leaves.  The short concrete pillars clasping the stiff safety railings are covered with indigenous geometric designs of bird, boat, fish, kite, and man.

 On the opposite river bank, the seven or eight-storey apartments are obviously new.  Their external walls are coated with different colours.  The walls on the top floor are light-blue, the walls on the next two floors below it are light-grey, and the walls on the three floors below are light-brown.  I cannot see the colour of the walls on the lower floor because they are blocked by outflowing palm fronds.  

Half an hour later, the bus ascends a winding road around the slope of the intervening mountain range.  With every turn, I momentarily perceive the majestic mist hovering around the peaks of the distant range.  The sky is dark, threatening the advent of heavy rain.  It does drizzle slightly but then stops.  Fortunately, it does not pour.  

After a journey of thirty-five kilometres from Baoting, the bus finally reaches the outskirt of Wuzhishan downtown.  Some modern condominiums have just been completed, which are very attractive in design and colours.  Their balconies curve outward.  Four colours blend harmoniously: the dull-green of the tainted windows and balcony glass doors, the white of the window frames and external floor wall, the beige of the walls, and the dark-brown of the dividing walls.  I would confer an award on the consulting architect.  A few minutes later, my bus terminates near the corner of Haiyu North Road and Haiyu South Road.  

Chongshan town is founded on the banks of the upper tributaries of Changhua (Flourishing Transforming) River.  Two hundred and thirty kilometres in length, this second longest river in Hainan flows west from its source in the central range.  Its mouth at Changhua Harbour lies twenty kilometres north of Dongfang town on the west coast.

For 4 RMB, the trishaw takes me across a bridge to Wuzhishan Hotel, a kilometre southwest.  At its car park, I notice the Cantonese version of its name - “Ng Chi Shan Hotel” - on both the flagpole pedestal and roof of the lobby entrance.  The owner is probably from Hong Kong.  This clean-looking hotel is situated at the T-junction of Aimin Road and Guoxing Road, fifty metres from Wuzhishan People’s Government Building.  The cost per night is about 160 RMB.  It is not crowded.

As it is far too late to travel to Shuimanxiang, the base village-town of Hainan’s highest peak, I decide to explore the small downtown.  By way of comparison, Wuzhishan City itself has a population of only slightly more than a hundred thousand in 2010.

Facing the hotel entrance is a small park that is about one hundred metres in length and eighty metres in breadth.  It is an ordinary park without any imposing statue or gazebo.  Although it is Saturday afternoon, the park is relatively quiet.  A few people are sitting on the benches, talking, while some small children are playing.  Walking along the short Guoxing Road, I soon reach the main Haiyu South Road.  At the left corner is a laundry, located opposite a school.  After the proprietress has enumerated her fees, I swiftly return to the hotel to fetch my clothing for washing, and then continue my excursion.  

Today, Nansheng (South Sacred) River, a Changhua tributary, is dry, with shallow pools of water trapped here and there among the large cakes of mud.  I stand on Haiyu South Road Bridge, which I have crossed earlier.  With only his bare hand, a man is stooping, trying to catch fishes hiding under the partly submerged rocks.  I move nearer, crossing the bridge.  The walkway sandwiched between the canal and Hebei Yanhe Road is not heavily used by people.  My view from here is better.  Unbelievably, the fisherman succeeds in seizing a small fish with his right hand, and quickly transfers it into his brown cloth bag.  Judging by the visible head and tail of the fish, I gauge its size at about twelve centimetres in length.  He repeats his performance, lifting up the light rocks.  Two well-dressed ladies are scouring the dry beds, looking for something which I cannot ascertain.  

Fruiting rose apple trees abound along the spacious walkway.  A few unripe fruits have fallen onto the pavement.  Crushed by infrequent footwear, their lingering scent instantly ignites vivid memories of those juicy fruits I once sampled as a thieving young schoolboy.  I am tempted to pluck one.  But I am too chicken to run afoul of the law here.  Imagine the international news headline: “Flew to climb Wuzhishan hill, foreigner crewed to Wuzhishan jail – for a rose apple.”

Across the road is a new hotel.  It will be ready for occupancy in three or four months, says a young female executive, who is having a tea break.  The nightly room rates will range from around 500 to 600 RMB.  Looking out of their balconies or windows, its guests will enjoy the view of the carefree rustic town and one of the longest rivers in Hainan.  The hotel is a stone-throw from the bus station.

As I wander around the uncrowded town, I strain to differentiate the Han from non-Han citizens.  In China, ninety-four percent of the population is of Han descent while fifty-five ethnic minorities comprise the remainder.  Despite the high percentage of Li in Hainan, the unusual situation is not evident to me.  Perhaps Han and non-Han people look similar because they all trace their ancestry to southern China centuries earlier.  Perhaps the overwhelming majority of Li and Miao people live in suburban villages and not in urbanized towns.  Or perhaps, as reported in the media, more of them are adopting Han beliefs and lifestyle.  Unfortunately, because of my tight schedule, I do not have the time to visit a native village.

Li people form an interesting ethnic community.  They worship ancestral and other spirits and the Thunder God, and their women adorn their faces and bodies with tattoos.  Lady Xian, who could possibly be my ancestor, is a Li; so I could have some Li-DNA in me.  While the men farm or hunt, the women weave intricate designs, working with their hands and feet on looms.  Their unique crafts and customs attract tourists, local and overseas.

On the third day of the third lunar month, the Li and Miao celebrate their traditional festival of love, expressing their admiration for one another and invocation for double harvest and good hunting.  It is a time of courtship for the young.  In Wuzhishan and Sanya, games and performances of dance and songs mark the occasion, their outpouring energy captivating their audience.  In private, they sit in circle, relishing their rice wine and preserved meat.  According to anecdotes, the Lis were once sexually permissive.  

Their version of tea is unusual, brewed first with a whole fish and then using the soup to prepare the tea.  Served in a small bowl with pieces of fish meat, it comes in three flavours: salty, sourish, and sweet.  Unfortunately, I miss out on this experience.

Interestingly, the Li people use their nose, instead of their mouth, to blow their flute.  Made from a single bamboo node about a foot in length, the nose flute was apparently invented a thousand years ago.  It has three holes on the top for blowing notes on a range of seven scales and a hole at the bottom node for exhaled air.  I am impressed by their ingenuity and versatility.

Admiring the river while walking along Jiefang Road, I meet a couple from Beijing enjoying their evening constitution.  A medical professor, the gentleman has recently retired from his university.  They are on vacation, staying in the nearby apartment owned by their friend who is operating a business in Wuzhishan.  I am too polite – and also too Mandarin illiterate – to probe into their friend’s speciality.  What sort of enterprise can the businessman be engaged in, here in this small town?  My mind wonders.  In my pidgin Mandarin, we exchange our brief life stories.  I explain my travel plan in Hainan.

It is almost evening.  At a small cafe across the bus station at Haiyu North Road, I enquire the price of the remaining half duck that is lying on the proprietress’ shelf at the shop front.  Disconcertingly to me, she courteously directs me to take a seat while she fixes my dinner.  My anxiety level shoots up.  Will this be a case of price gouging?  What shall I do if she charges me 100 RMB after I have finished my meal?

During the course of my dinner, I twice ask her assistant the price.  Each time, the reply is not reassuring.  
“Don’t worry.  She will tell you afterwards.”  

The boss is in the kitchen, cooking dishes for two other customers.  At the end, the bill for the meat, bowl of rice, and small plate of vegetables comes to 25 RMB, which is relatively cheap.  If only she has informed me earlier, I would have thoroughly enjoyed my dinner.

Vainly attempting to climb Wuzhishan(五指山)
 

A grave mistake for anyone aspiring to conquer Wuzhishan is not reaching its base very early in the morning.  By “very early”, I mean six or seven.  The latest would be about nine or ten.  That is, of course, my folly, which I do not realise until later in the day.  I arise only at eight on Sunday morning.    

I also take my leisurely time to admire and photograph the many House Swifts (小白腰雨燕) - subsequently identified for me by Professor Liang Wei - gliding around the five-storey government building located about fifty metres from my hotel entrance.  This huge flock of birds has made their nests under the eaves.  They are small birds, approximately the length of fifteen centimetres.  Black in colour, they have white throats, feeding on flying insects, which include bees and beetles.

House Swifts are common resident in Southeast Asia.  But during the last decade, they have been observed in northern Australia.  They are a species of swift belonging to the Apodidae family.  The other species include the Dark-rumped Swift, Fork-tailed Swift, Cave Swiftlet, Moluccan Swiftlet, Mottled Spinetail, and Black Spinetail.  Because they are high fliers, which rarely feed on the ground, it is not easy to see them in close range and appreciate their colours and features.  As always, I am satisfied just to watch them in graceful motion, randomly criss-crossing the blue sky with their stretched crescent wings while capturing their luckless prey.  It is nine forty-five.  I realize I am running late.  

“When will my clothing be ready for collection?”   I anxiously enquire.  
“Tomorrow evening,” the nearby dry cleaner lady replies.

A motorcyclist approaches.  He quotes 3 RMB for the short ride to the bus terminal.  I gladly hop onto it.  Thinking that some food stalls will be at my destination, I skip my breakfast.

The eighteen-seater bus to Shuimanxiang (水满乡; literally: Water-full Township) carries seven passengers, including me and a young girl of about four years of age.  The fare is only 10 RMB (about S$2).  The conductress is a pretty lady in her mid-twenties.  She is fashionable, wearing a yellow sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of low-cut jeans that is in danger of slipping off.  

Although Shuimanxiang is twenty kilometres northeast of Wuzhishan town, the undulating terrain does not permit a direct bus route.  As a result, the bus will have to make a twenty-kilometre detour north along 224 National Road to Maoyang town (毛阳镇) and then a twenty-five or thirty kilometre trip southeast.  In short, it will take me two hours to reach my destination, dashing any hope of ever climbing to the Wuzhishan peak.  I am prepared to scale even a quarter of the way, perhaps four or five hundred metres high.

After a kilometre from downtown station, the bus ascends a mountain slope.  Because of the light rain, it penetrates a very thin shower of mist.  The air is cool and fresh, and I immediately feel rejuvenated.  The scenery is soothing and breathtaking too.  The white fog obscuring the opposite peak, the dense green trees in the distance, the flowering shrubs thriving on the escarpments, the thick grass on the ground, and the few local houses – these are scenes leaping out of a classical Chinese painting.  The residents here are blessed.  Their environment is pristine.  Although they may be poor, they do not live in want.  We fly past banana plants, mango and jackfruit trees, and other fruit trees, which unfortunately bear no fruits at this time of the year for me to identify.  Lucky people, I say casually to myself.    

At the petrol station in Maoyang, the driver injects four plastic jerry cans with petrol at the cost of 180 RMB for 21.15 litres, 250 RMB for 29.38 litres (two cans), and 268.06 RMB for 31.5 litres.  Each of these will be delivered to different clients along the route for use, presumably, in their vehicles.  Conveying these petrol cans in the luggage compartment of the bus is, of course, a dangerous practice.  But buses here perform a social service such as buying and ferrying cargoes such as fruits, fertilizers, and petrol to the locals residing in outlying villages.  At the same station, each of the two motorcyclists fills his bike with 1.17 litres costing 10 RMB, which should enable him to travel around twenty kilometres.  Given the low monthly wages of employees, the price of 8.5 RMB per litre is very expensive.

By the time it leaves Maoyang at eleven, the bus is carrying fifteen passengers, some with gunny sacks bulging with perhaps fruits or goods.  Again, a kilometre later, it struggles up the meandering road.  The visible slope is on my left; it is alive with flowering plants.  The valley is on my right.  Cicadas are chirping their deafening calls.  An occasional song burst forth from an unseen bird.  Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of some flashing pond or river.

My mind drifts back to the reminiscence of famous botanist Benjamin Couch Henry (1850-1901), to visions of frequent rainfalls in this mountainous heart and blood-sucking leeches that latched relentlessly onto his skin during his exploration of Hainan in the eighteen-eighties.  He mentioned also the splendours of the heavily forested mountain sides, the “many fine ravines and wild gorges”, abundant cat-tails with yellow flowers, the great variety of ferns, and the lush bamboos.  Here I am, looking at a ravine, sharing his immense joys.

While some passengers alight at the small villages along the way, some board.  I study their faces and their skins.  Are these the Li or Miao people?  They look like me; they dress like me.  I stare at them, straining again to see the distinguishing indigenous features, if any, of the Li.  I find none.

According to Henry, the Li villagers practised the slash-and-burn agricultural method as well as gathered animal hides, deer horns, fragrant woods, mushrooms, and rattan, which they traded with the local Chinese.  The environmentally destructive slash-and-burn technique has been officially discouraged because soil erosion had resulted in land degradation and extinction of many species of plants in the past.  I see no evidence of the practice on this journey.

Hainan has about four thousand and two hundred plant species, of which forty-five are treated as endangered.  Two thousand species have medicinal value.  These trees have an average height of about thirty metres.  

At Shuimanxiang, I commit another uncharacteristic blunder.  When I step down from the bus, perhaps in a daze, one of the trishaw drivers mentions a name in Mandarin.  Without understanding him, I simply assume that he is referring to Wuzhishan foothill; such is my eagerness to climb the famous peak.  I should have explained my intention; instead, I ask the cost.  It is 5 RMB, which is reasonable.

This hasty decision lands me at the “Tropic Rain Forest Scenery Spot Of Five Finger Mountain” (五指山热带雨林风景区; Wuzhishan Redai Yulin Fengjing Qu).  That is the English sign on a prominent retaining wall.  It is located two kilometres south of Shuimanxiang.  My next mistake is to delay the rectification of my earlier error.  I should have requested him to take me to the foothill, which is four kilometres north of Shuimanxiang; instead, I decide to look at the tourist attraction and also have my lunch before embarking on my heroic mission.  

Below me several Chinese tourists are jumping into their inflated rafts for the river ride of their life.  I count at least twelve rafts, each with two paddlers.  Everyone is wearing an orange lifejacket and a helmet of a different colour.  Moving off when ready, they will take eighty minutes to navigate a course of approximately six kilometres down this tributary of Changhua River (昌化江).  Fortunately for them, the weather is sunny.

This starting point is some ten kilometres from the Wuzhishan peak.  The central mountainous region of Wuzhishan City and adjoining Qiongzhong County is the cradle of three longest rivers in Hainan: Nandu, Changhua, and Wanquan.  Besides these, about one hundred and fifty other rivers radiate from the central highlands.  Except for some short stretches, all of these rivers are not navigable because of rapids along the course.  For the daring, an adventure in Wuzhishan Grand Canyon rafting is a test.  

A few persons are sitting around a table at a stall.  I ask the owner.  Yes, she will fry a plate of local vegetable with pork pieces.  From the array of fresh vegetables on the table, I pick a vegetable that I have not seen before.  It consists of a stalk with leaves and many tendrils, which I later learn from Cai Hong is pumpkin leaves (南瓜叶子).  Fried with garlic, the pork pieces are thinly sliced and evenly cooked, and the vegetable is crunchy.  The dish is delicious.  Including a bowl of rice, my sumptuous lunch costs 25 RMB, which I regard as fair.

Three trishaws are parked by the side of the road but their drivers have gone for lunch.  They are nowhere to be seen.  I am stranded at one in the afternoon.  I am frantic.  Three Chinese ladies are also waiting impatiently for them.  Twenty minutes later, I am getting more desperate.  I see a motorcyclist dropping off his pillion-seat passenger.  I swiftly hail him.  I explain my purpose, and happily agreed on a fare of 30 RMB.

He takes me to his single-storey house, which functions as a provision shop in this small village-town.  He fills up his motorcycle with petrol from a jerry can.  Although relatively clean, the short street in front of his door is barely large enough for two cars to squeeze through.  At one end of this street is another equally narrow street.  I count only nine people, five being kids.  One - a toddler - is standing in the middle of the street.  

Only forty-eight years old, Ma Wen Xiu has three sons aged twenty-six, twenty-four, and twenty-one.  My mental calculation tells me that he married at the age of twenty.  He looks like a typical local of the inland: tanned from the harsh sunlight and dressed without any care of the world.  He sports a pair of sandals, a black boxer short with white rim, and a light-yellow T-shirt beneath his unbuttoned long-sleeved beige shirt.  His head is balding.  He looks like a decent man; so I feel safe with him.  

Leaving the main winding road, we turn left into a track, which is a hundred metres from the mountain trail to the peak of Wuzhishan.  Four wooden huts with attap roofs stand in the midst of tall trees on one side of the track.  One of them is the ticket office, Ma tells me on our way out when I later ask him.  Near these huts is a pile of huge irregularly-shaped rocks, presumably from the mountain for ornamental purpose.

On the other side of the track are the government forestry office, a new building under construction, a wooden house with its roof undergoing renovation, a small brick house, and two other wooden houses.  The new three-storey building, enclosed within bamboo scaffoldings, is half completed because the external walls have not been built.  On completion, it will be the outstanding building along this track.  I see only two other persons around the area.

Ma accompanies me to the trail on the hillside.  It seems deserted, and my fear emerges.  Will I be robbed and murdered by bandits in that secluded place?  I quickly offer him 50 RMB to act as my guide me for an hour.  Although narrow, the path is constructed with cement, which partially explains the 60 RMB admission fee.  I have not been charged because I have been accompanied by him, a local, Ma tells me.  As we walk along the trail, I soon pass a trail which branches upwards.

“Where does this lead to?”  
“To the peak of Wuzhishan”, he replies.  
Excitedly I ask, “Can you take me up there?”  
“No.  It takes four hours to climb up to the top.”
“I don’t want to go to the very top.  Just some distance.”
“But it is about to rain.  And it is very slippery.”

Kaput.  My aspiration of climbing halfway up the Wuzhishan peak has been crushed.  My ego is deflated.  And I am downcast.  I am sure he does not want to be responsible for my death.  To young Hainanese in Hainan, I am an old man, a “Da Shu” (大叔; literally, Big Uncle).  In buses, I need to seat down because I might tumble and hurt myself should the bus jerk suddenly: they ruminate, as they offer me their seat.

Ma indicates ahead, the gradual elevation.  Thus, along the gentle and easy trail, this old man carefully trots, perhaps to Ma’s great relief.  He is right.  It takes four hours to pull oneself to the summit and another three or four hours to descend.  That is the average time for a physically fit person.  And early morning is the best time to begin one’s ascent.

I console myself.  This gentle gradient is still the slope of Wuzhishan, the highest mountain in Hainan Island.  I am still climbing up Wuzhishan, although not to its glorious apex.  Ma tells me that he has escorted adventurers up.  His fee is 200 RMB for the day.  As I look upward towards my right, he points out an unusually long and thick hanging root that twists and coils.  The trees are tall, blocking any hope of seeing the peak of Wuzhishan from here.  Yet they are not dense enough to deflect penetrating sunlight.  This forest is not dark and gloomy.  The trail is comfortably wide enough for one climber, who should have no fear of sliding off the side and into the valley below.  

It sets no record: I am only one hundred or two hundred metres above sea level.  Serving as steps, flat stone boulders have been considerately laid at regular intervals on slightly steeper slopes for visitors’ safety.  Along an even steeper section, a concrete railing has been erected.  The shallow ravine is on my left.  The river is almost dry.  I walk under a huge rock that could possibly collapse if shaken vigorously during an earth tremor.  Nearby are a shrine and a white stone statue of a god (圣人; sheng ren).  So overwhelming and reverential is my indescribable experience of Wuzhishan I even forget to ask Ma the name of this mountain divine.

Made of sliced tree trunks, signs with names carved and painted in red are posted by the sides of unique trees along the route.  Native to Hainan and Vietnam, Endospermum chinense Benth, belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family, may attain a height of thirty-five metres.  Its light hardwood timber is used for making boxes, disposable chopsticks, match splints, and plywood.  Homalium hainanense Gagnep (红花天料木, commonly known as “Mu-Sheng Shu” 母生树in Mandarin) is rare and can shoot up to forty metres.  Its trunk offers quality timber.  Aglaia dasyclada How et. T. Chen belongs to the Mahogany family.  Having edible fruits, Choerospondias axillaris Roxb./Burtt et Hill may reach up to twenty metres while Helicia hainanensis Hayata (海南山龙眼; Hainan Mountain Longan) may reach eighteen metres.  Sphaeropteris brunoniana (Hook) is a tree fern.  The one in front of me is two metres tall.  But they can grow up to ten metres high.  One tree fern, which is over sixteen metres in height, has been recorded in Hainan.  I have not seen a Hopea hainanensis, which is an endangered hardwood species indigenous to Hainan and Vietnam.

About six hundred species of trees are unique to Hainan Island, and about four hundred and fifty are logged.  Their tree trunks are so hard that they are impervious to borers.  Because they do not readily rot, they are used for building purposes.  Indeed, a huge quantity of good wood was used in the construction of Beijing Great Hall of the People and Palace Museum.  Some species have medicinal properties, which can be extracted to treat diseases like cancer, haemorrhage, leukaemia psoriasis, and rheumatism.  An interesting tree species with potential commercial use is the diesel-oil tree.  A single tree can yield between ten and twenty-five kilograms of oil, which has similar combustibility as diesel oil.  

Of course, some plants like Upas Tree (known in Mandarin as the “Jiandu Mu” or “Arrow Poison Tree”) have poisonous sap, which the Li people smear onto their arrow tips to kill their prey, whether beasts or enemies.  One should be extremely careful not to accidentally bite a Haimangguo, the fruit of the Cerbera odollam tree.  It is deadly.  For obvious reason, this coastal or marshland plant is commonly known as “Suicide Tree”, indirectly responsible for many deaths.  In Singapore, it is known as “pong pong” because of the sound from the mango-shaped falling fruits.

Meeting Ma is a win-win event.  Thanks to him, I get to climb part of Wuzhishan while, thanks to me, he earns one or two days’ worth of wages.  After kindly stopping along the way to take a photograph of me posing against the background of Wuzhishan, he drops me off at the bus stand at three in the afternoon for the fare of 20 RMB.

Lingering there at the single-lane track, I gradually absorb a lasting inspiration from the lofty distant mountain, in deep awe of the magnificent landmark and great envy of bold visitors who have triumphantly kissed its sacred peak.

Clouds constantly drift from right to left, veiling its crown.  Unscarred by any brown patch of land-clearing or burning, its slope is decked with green trees.  Only the unruly row of houses about three hundred metres in front of me obstructs my view of its foothill.  Similarly, seven separate clumps of bamboo at the park across the track are partly responsible too.  Tall Areca-nut palms dot the fringes of the park.  When the clouds fade away, a perpendicularly eroded section of the peak becomes visible.  A flock of geese waddles across the track to drink from the puddle in the park.  I see three dogs; I am surprised that they have not been eaten.  

On my part of the track are two rows of two-storey houses, totalling about nine houses.  Two of these have demountable stalls in front, their owners thoughtfully providing customers with tables and chairs to sit.  One of the two stalls, which also sell drinks, is doing a better business because it is better located.  Behind is a small market selling firewood, vegetables, and pork.  I wait one hour and a half for the bus.  Others are waiting there before me.  Four schoolgirls are in uniform, and a boy of about fourteen is talking to them.  Four other girls are not in uniform and a girl of about eight or nine has a backpack.  Two trishaws are waiting for fare.

Three baby barn swallows (家燕) are cloistered in their cosy semi-conical nest constructed under the ledge of the floor above the grocery shop.  Their home is only three metres above the ground, snugged at a corner, the intersection of three walls: the front wall of the shop, the ledge, and the solid reinforcement beam supporting the first floor.  If I have a short ladder, I could easily pat them.  But their parents are keeping vigil, cleverly balancing on the electricity cord just inches below.  They are unafraid of people.  The parents have a black breastband separating their dark chestnut faces and throats from the white underparts.

A close inspection reveals their painstaking effort in nest construction.  Each constituent piece of hardened mud pallet is about the size of my thumb’s digit.  It is apparent that the couple began with the formation of the bottom layer, the foundation.  Further additions, with dried grass as reinforcement, lead to the formation of the inverse bell-shaped home, which should protect their young from the harsh sunlight and cold wind.  They are fortunate; the farms and grassland around provide sufficient breeding ground for insects, which are their food.  Barn swallows are a species of swallows in the Hirundinidae family.

By the time it turns up at four-thirty, the bus is almost full, with most being school children around fourteen years of age.  I struggle to balance myself in the moving can of packed human sardines.  I am, however, fortunate; I manage to get a ride.  The bus does not even stop for passengers waiting patiently along the route.  Their frantic waving is futile.  Their faces tell of deep disappointment.  They are doomed to wait another hour or two for the next bus - if it is not packed like ours.

When we finally reach town at five-forty in the evening, my thoughts rush back to those young locals still stranded.  If they are lucky, they might reach town by seven or eight at night.

At the same café, more male patrons are having their dinner.  I soon understand why.  A beautiful young lady is helping in the service.  She is in her mid-twenties.  Smartly-outfitted and wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes, she is always smiling.  Judging from the other assistants’ addresses, I surmise she is the proprietress’ daughter.  I too join the crowd, startled by Miss Wuzhishan’s beauty and grace as she glides from table to table.

 
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Copyright 2015