Rambling around my ancestral Hainan
Chapter 5
South Coast - From Sunny Sanya To Exotic Baoting
Uncle Dian is accompanying your mum to the airport in a cab at two in the afternoon, Cai Hong relays through the receptionist’s phone. I am relieved. My mobile phone is displaying an annoying “No SIM card” message. I do not know until I return to Sydney that my phone is faulty.
Outside the hotel, the few passing cabs are occupied. A motorized trishaw appears. The fare to the railway station is 10 RMB, which we gladly pay. We queue behind three persons at the ticket office. I softly ask the young lady if she knows Hainanese. Though her microphone, she instructs me, to my embarrassment, to speak in Mandarin. I jump aside. Jo moves in, with the questions. The 1.17 pm train to Sanya is fully booked, the reply goes. The next is at 2.57 pm; the following one is at 5 pm. We retreat to consider our options. We resign ourselves to a two-hour wait.
“It could have been worse,” we console each other.
A staff officer is standing by the ticketing machine, aiding some locals. While I guard our bags and luggage, Jo appeals for assistance. He is very obliging. The cost of a ticket is 68 RMB (around $14), which is inexpensive to us for a distance of about one hundred and eighty kilometres. The journey will take about fifty minutes.
Train ticket
火车票
Security is overriding even for internal rail travel. The X-ray machine shows “a large knife” in one of our bags. While I unpack our bulky haversacks, many passengers surround me, inquisitive. Jo surrenders a small pair of general-purpose scissor. A pocket knife for cutting fruits passes the inspection. The large knife seems elusive. In retrospection, I suspect the foldable umbrella as the culprit deceiving the scanner. I sign the register, which records the confiscated item.
Promptly, the train screeches beside the platform, which is deserted except for those boarding passengers. We step aside for the few disembarkers from our assigned carriage before rushing in. A gentleman in his mid-thirties is occupying my seat. I plop into an empty seat in another row. At the next stop, a young man boards the carriage. Peering at his ticket, he moves towards me, perplexed. I am occupying his seat. I nod at the gentleman in my seat. He stands, and vanishes into the next coach. I subsequently learn from Cai Hong that some thrifty passengers book non-seating tickets. A young engineer working in Shanghai and I engage in a casual conversation.
Sanya Railway Station at four-twenty on a Friday afternoon amazes us with the crowd surging out of its turnkeys. Many passengers are re-united with their waiting families, relatives, or friends. The few taxis that enter the driveway are instantaneously flagged down by the knowledgeable visitors or residents. Many others head for the bus stop. I turn on my hand phone again. It reveals the same message. Are we out of the phone’s reception range? We are frustrated because we cannot call Guoxi Hotel to make enquiries.
Sanya Railway Station
三亚火车站
A Hainanese private van operator approaches, quoting 40 RMB as fare. When we reject his offer, he reduces it by 10 RMB. As we later discover, the actual cost by taxi is only 20 RMB. Along the way, he alleges - falsely - that Guoxi Hotel is not a good hotel, a claim that we foolishly believe. Four-star Golden Phoenix Seaview Hotel is better, he insists. He offers to bring us to another hotel if we should find it unsuitable. However, that would cost us a further 30 RMB, he adds. He then attempts to hire himself to us for the following day. We turn him down, saying that we need a rest from the tiring journey.
Golden Phoenix Seaview Hotel is a very good hotel, conveniently located at the corner of Sanya Bay Road and Yingbin Road just across the famous Sanya beach. Naturally, the daily charge is a relatively staggering 700 RMB ($140), although it does include breakfast for two. It is shocking when we are accustomed to paying less than 200 RMB ($40). But when compared with the cost (A$100) of a night’s accommodation in an Australian suburban budget motel, the equivalent A$115 per night is however tolerable.
Golden Phoenix Seaview Hotel
金凤凰海景酒店
We decide on a night’s accommodation. Restively, the driver sits on the long lounge sofa, eyeing Jo as she finalizes the booking at the reception desk. His hope of further milking us has just been dashed.
Jo’s filling has detached itself during lunch in Wenchang. Wary that she may accidentally bite on something hard with the chipped tooth, she seeks the receptionists’ assistance for direction to the nearest dental clinic. Given our inadequate Mandarin comprehension, the instruction mystifies us. We are told to go to “425”. Kindly pointing the direction, the concierge at the entrance says that it is about five hundred metres away.
Walking northwards along Sanya Bay Road, we watch in vain for the number “425” on the buildings. Near a bus stand, we are shocked. Those waiting at the stand are too, I am sure. A tanned young man in his late twenties is walking towards us. He is totally naked. No sandals even. He calmly walks past. Is he insane? Or is he an outlandish performance artist, bent on shocking his involuntary audience’s moral sensibility? Unlike a “performing arts” ballerina or kabuki actor, a typical avant-garde “performance” artist presents a one-off non-repeatable exhibition that tests or stretches community social or moral limits.
After five hundred metres, we turn right into Youyi Road. We stop a passerby, who points to the block of shops a hundred metres ahead. We are astonished: we face the 425th Division of the Peoples’ Liberation Army Clinic. The receptionist is extremely helpful, bringing us to the dental department where the dentists are preparing to close for the night. After Jo has explained her problem, the senior dentist goes beyond the call of duty to treat her. The repair of the chipped tooth cost only 200 RMB. Jo is very pleased with the result. The crowning would cost 1000 RMB and the crown would take ten days to be made in Guangzhou. We have no time for that final treatment.
Listening to the dentist and his assistants during the hour, I constantly hear “Ya”. “Ya” is Mandarin for tooth. Has the name “Sanya” any relation to tooth? In spoken Mandarin, “Sanya” sounds like “three teeth”. On my tourist map, the peninsulas cradling Dadong Bay and Yalong Bay look like three teeth. I resolve to trace the origin of the name when we return to our hotel room.
“Sanya” sounds like “Three teeth”; the Sanya map shows “three teeth”
“三亚” 听起来像 “三齿”; 三亚地图显示 “三齿”
Bought in Haikou for 6.80 RMB, the paperback A Pocket Chinese-English Dictionary is useful. “San” (三) means “three” while “ya” (亚) may mean “second” or “inferior”. Literally, the name “Three inferior”, or “Thrice inferior”, is not an uplifting name for a world-famous city. This name choice puzzles me until I rummage the tourism pamphlets. Its original ancient name is “Yazhou” (崖州), in which “ya” refers to “cliff” or “valley” and the name means “cliff state”. Thus, “Sanya” literally means “three cliffs” or “three valleys”, which is better descriptively, although more complex for memorization. The simplified character is easier to remember, consisting of only six strokes.
Sanya City is a municipality, which lies forty kilometres south of Wuzhishan’s highest peak. This prefecture-level city covers an area of about one thousand nine hundred square kilometres, or ninety-two kilometres from east to west and fifty-seven kilometres from north to south. Within that area lives approximately six hundred and eighty-five thousand people (in 2010) from more than twenty nationalities, including Han, Li, Miao, and Hui.
With a density of three hundred and sixty people per square kilometre, which is higher than the provincial average of two hundred and forty, Sanya offers a more favourable environment for a less stressful lifestyle than Haikou, which has a higher density of nine hundred and ten people per square kilometre. However, the Sanya City population, the third largest in Hainan after Haikou and Danzhou City, is projected to increase rapidly in the future, considering that the addition in population from 2000 was two hundred thousand.
In terms of air quality, Sanya ranked first in Asia and second internationally, according to a United Nations study of one hundred and forty-eight cities in forty-five countries during the period 1998-2003. Here, flowers blossom throughout the year. Two rivers flow sedately through the town, behind which are two hills. Because of its island environment, pristine forest, and slow and light industrialization, Sanya is increasingly becoming a favourite tourist destination for people from the global community.
Once upon a time, Yazhou Prefecture was a region feared by many. Zhao Ding, as we will recall, was banished here, dying in despair from a slow death. We, however, do not dread; we are here to inhale its quality air, albeit for only a few days.
Luhuitou (Deer Turns Head), the legend
Although buffet breakfast starts at eight and ends at ten on Saturday morning, we enter the dining room at nine to an irresistible spread. Rebuffing the spousal warning of high-cholesterol risk, I gluttonly seize a bundle of fried bacon strips. Your cholesterol level will shoot up, she repeatedly moans as I heartedly dig into the aromatic delight.
Satiated after an hour of gorging, we photograph the facilities of the hotel and the activities around it before taking a brief walk along the beach.
Sanya Bay Road and beach
三亚湾路和海滩
Bougainvillea is the official Sanya City flower. At the front porch of our hotel entrance are two beds of them. Trimmed to prevent unruly and thorny vines from scrapping the skins off visitors, the tall healthy bushes are blooming, their small and distinctive bright-purple flowers outnumbering the green leaves. Together, their hues harmonize very well with the joyful light yellowish-brown hotel exterior. A few coconut trees, two small Pandanus fascicularis plants, six tall Traveller’s Palms (Ravenala madagascariensis), a small Bird of Paradise fan (Strelitzia reginae), and some bushes and ornamental palms of unknown identity to me comprise the diversity of hardy vegetation in the courtyard.
Bougainvillea is the official flower of Sanya City
九重葛是三亚市官方花
Standing twenty metres from the front entrance of our hotel, I lift up my head; I become deeply galvanized by its aesthetic design and tincture. The nine-storey building tapers off as the number of rooms on each floor decreases in proportion to the hotel height. With the octagonal house on top, it takes on the shape of a dome when perceived from afar. Like a person with open arms to embrace another, the front facade is slightly concave, the light yellowish-brown tone of the walls evoking the warmth earth of Sanya.
We cross the road for a quick impression of the famous beach before we rush back to our room to arrange the move to Sanya Huiyuan Henghe Hotel, which lies a kilometre up the road near the corner of Yingbin and Jiefang Road. The taxi fare is 6 RMB. Happily, I tip the cabbie a 1-RMB, which is only twenty cents. Situated along Jiefang Road, the hotel is just a couple of doors from Guoxi Hotel. (As I discover during my third trip, the latter, an up-class hotel, offers a pleasant room costing only about 400 RMB and comes with a simple complimentary Chinese buffet breakfast for two.) Once settled in the room, I hastily familiarize myself with the pronunciation of the relevant road names on our map so that we can voice the correct directions to cab drivers. I learn that “Yingbin” means “Welcome Visitor”; “Jiefang” means “Liberation”; and “Jixiang” means “Auspicious Felicity”.
View from Guoxi Hotel, 747 Jiefang Road, Sanya
果喜大酒店, 风光
Since Luhuitou (“Deer Turning Its Head”) Park is only about six kilometres south of our hotel, we agree to visit it first. Fortunately, a coming cab stops. The driver is from Jiangxi; he is friendly. He drops us off at the entrance, at the foot of the grassy hill on the western part of Luhuitou Peninsula. The fare is 16.50 RMB, and I gladly pay him 18. An admission fee is imposed, and visitors have a choice: they can walk up to the elevation of about two hundred and eighty-five metres, or they can opt for an easier way. We settle for the latter. The fare is inexpensive. The small green-coloured resort cart with ten comfortable passenger seats is the size of a minivan without doors or windows for easy access from the sides. Powered by an electric battery, it smoothly brings us three-quarter of the way.
Electric resort passenger cart
十座四轮电动观光代步车
Along the narrow path to the summit we breathlessly trudge, pausing frequently to catch glimpses of Sanya city centre through the trunks and foliage of flourishing trees on the hillside. Three stalls are selling trinkets, and some visitors are perusing.
At Sea-View Platform, a flock of doves is vigilant because an enterprising middle-aged lady is selling packages of seeds for 5, 10, 20, or 30 RMB. An Eastern European lady purchases a bag and, as though on cue, more than eighty doves take off from the ground and tree branches. Simultaneously, they land on her head and shoulders, impatiently fidgeting and screaming to be fed. She poses with her outstretched hands, overflowing with goodies, and her husband snaps a few memorable photographs of the feeding frenzy that follows. Satisfied, he pays 3 RMB for the privilege.
Resident pigeons waiting for feeds
本地鸽子等待饲料
Seamlessly cemented together, twelve layers of skilfully carved sandstones formed the huge sculpture that inspires the park’s name. Its creation demanded four years of meticulousness and perspicuity from its famous creator. At an imposing height of nine metres, the deer, flanked by a young native couple, stands on a three-metre high platform, which consists of five layers of sandstone blocks. Its length is about nine metres, and width is about 4.6 metres. On both sides of the platform, several visitors mingle, elevating their heads to appreciate the wondrous symbol of Sanya.
Momentarily dazed, I stand there too, still and silent, musing over the rustic beauty of the smiling bare-footed Li girl in simple village dress. With both elbows close to the sides of her body, her right arm is raised vertically such that the palm of her hand, which is under her chin, faces downwards while her left arm is also raised vertically except that her palm, by the side of her left cheek, faces the sky as if offering a plate of delicacies to the gods. The doe gently turns her head towards the softness and innocence of the lady. I slowly move to the other side, a contrasting epic, a strong, muscular bare-chested Li warrior resting his back against the doe, his right hand on her front leg, and his left hand clutching a bow, which is stringed behind his shoulder.
Beautiful Li maiden and handsome Li warrior
美丽的黎女孩和英俊的黎战士
Locals chant a legend, a handsome young hunter from Wuzhishan pursuing a beautiful Spotted Deer across ninety-nine mountains and ninety-nine rivers for nine days and nine nights until she came to Sanya seashore. When he adjusted his bow to shoot, the doe turned her head and magically metamorphosed into a pretty lady. They fell in love, married, and raised their family. Their blissful life was, however, struck by a tragedy. A wild boar stole the moon, causing an eclipse and suffering to the Li people. To eradicate the menace, the young maiden sacrificed her life, smearing her blood on her husband’s arrow. The monster was slayed, the people saved, and the lady changed into this mountain peak.
A plaque at the tail-end of the deer icon tells us that it “was designed and built by Mr. Lin Shuhao in 1987, who drew inspiration from the legend.” Confusingly, the plaques below the feet of the Li couple state “SCULPTED BY LIN YU HAO”. Is the sculptor “Shu Hao”? Or is he “Yu Hao”?
Perched on the platform, and under Hunter Li’s protective gaze, I can vividly see Dadonghai, the tranquil bay on the southeastern side of Luhuitou Peninsula. Then shifting to Miss Li’s side, I am stunned by the shocking pace of modernisation in Sanya centre.
Dadonghai (top); Sanya (bottom)
大东海， （上）; 三亚 （下）
Here is a city that is in a methodical rush to join the First World. More than seventy or eighty percent of downtown seems dotted with new high-rise buildings, buildings that are evidently less than thirty years old. Very unique and outstanding are, on my left, the five tall buildings on Phoenix Islet.
The vitality of the district and lives of its residents is reflected in the numerous ships and boats plying the waters in Sanya Bay. Its harbour has now become an important port for deluxe passenger ships and foreign trade.
Mass transformation of their once remote rural village would disconcert the happy Li couple, I suspect. None the less, Jo and I are enjoying the soothing sights from this plateau; so too are several visitors. They pose, sometimes in ridiculously funny postures, before the cameras of their friends and relatives. Some, however, sit meditatively on the broad steps under Miss Li’s lengthening shadow.
Tourists in funny poses
做滑稽的姿势的游人
Five metres behind the gigantic deer’s tail are five bougainvillea shrubs, pruned into huge balls. Is the landscaper implying that these are the deer’s colourful droppings? Years of precise trimming have recast a plant in the courtyard into a giant bonsai, a tree with bent trunk and two side branches. Aesthetically placed at the edges of this courtyard are five large pots of the plant. Here too lies a small statue of the smiling God of Happiness. Close to the five bushy balls are three Nolina recurvata Lem.-Agavaceae about thirty metres in height, in the middle of which is a small black granite rock about a metre in length. Rocks feature prominently in many wealthy family homes since ancient times.
Ten metres in front of the deer statue are two stalls, the one on the left selling trinkets like fridge magnets, hats, lady dresses and handbags, and necklaces while the one on the right selling drinks. A crowd gathers near a tree. Curious, we investigate. They are trying to communicate with a macaque shyly hiding behind the narrow trunk and eating a piece of coconut kernel. With a green banana, a boy is tempting it to come down. It fails. Behind the drink stall is its family of three. On the roof of the trinket stall is a family member too. They are endearing animals. But when they expose their rows of teeth, they scare me off.
Resident monkeys enjoying free food
地方猴子享受自由食物
Three-thirty in the warm afternoon seems a felicitous time to leave and return to town. Many of the trees on the way down are tagged. At the Friendship Store is a tamarind tree, Tamarindus Indica Linn (Caesalpiniaceae), which is one of the two official trees in Sanya City, the other being the Royal Poinciana (better known as the Flame of the Forest). This is the first time I am touching a tamarind tree, although I have tasted its seed pulps in the tangy sweet-and-sour fish dish occasionally cooked by Mum. This tree can grow up to eighteen metres in height. With even pinnate leaves, it reminds me of the acacia shrubs commonly found in Australia. I later check: the two species belong to the same family, the Fabaceae.
Tamarind tree
罗望子树
The other trees on the hillside include the following:
1. Buchanania Iatifolia Roxb., Anacerdiaceae
2. Phylianthus embalica Linn., Euphorbiaceae
3. Terminalia nigrovenulosa Pierre exLaness., Combretaceae
4. Barringtonia racemosa (Linn.) Spreng, Lecythidaceae
5. Lannea coromandelica (houtt.) Merr., Anacerdiaceae
6. Cordia dichotomy Forst.f., Boraginaceae
7. Wedelia chienensis (Osbeck) Merr., Compositae
To be sure, on Luhuitou are deers. At the Deer House, about twenty Sika or Spotted Deers are kept in the walk-in cage, where visitors feed them with grass sold by the keeper. These deers are very tame, eagerly accepting food from the excited hands. We mingle and exchange pleasantries with those seven or eight visitors, who are interacting merrily with these docile animals and observing them at close range. Since they generally lose their spot during winter, I can barely make out the spots on a couple of them. Deers are gentle creatures; they are regarded as a lucky mascot for lovers. Perhaps like deer, lovers flock, frolicking in courtship.
Tame deers
驯服鹿
Reaching the resort-passenger cart terminus, we decide to walk down to the entrance. Slowly savouring the changing scenery, we are at the exit by five in the late afternoon, and fortunate enough to hail a cab, which takes us back to Sanya Bay Road. Dropping at the bridge to Phoenix Island, we have our dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Though the price is reasonable, the food is not striking.
Strolling along the coastal walkway towards our first hotel, we are overwhelmed by the number of tourists, especially the elderlies in their sixties or even seventies, leisurely enjoying their evening constitution in the cool fresh marine breeze, some walking their fanciful toy dogs like the Yorkshire terrier and Bichon Frisé.
At the coastal park opposite the hotel, separate groups of visitors are participating in Chinese chess, dancing, karaoke, mah-jong, and card games around portable tables. Taiji exercises are the favourite of some middle-aged ladies. Their grace and supple bones belie their age. Exercise is important to them, especially when they, and not the state, bear their healthcare cost.
Sanya Bay beach activities
三亚湾海滩活动; Sānyà wān hǎitān huódòng
Copyright 2015
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