Tropical China - Haikou

HAIKOU is Hainan's steamy capital, set at the north of the island and separated from Guangdong Province by the 30-kilometre-wide Qiongzhou Channel. Business centre, main port and first stop for newly arrived holiday-makers and hopeful migrants alike, Haikou has all the atmosphere of a modern, typical Southeast Asian city.

There's a smattering of French colonial architecture, a few parks and monuments, gleaming new highrises, broad streets choked with traffic and pedestrians, and the all-pervading spirit of wilfully glib commerce. An indication of the ethos driving Haikou is that nobody seems to be a local: officials, businessmen and tourists are all from the mainland, while Li, Miao and Hakka flock from southern Hainan to hawk trinkets, as do the Muslim Hui who run the moneychanging businesses - all drawn by the opportunities that the city represents. Energetic yet soulless, Haikou feels a little more spacious and friendly than the average provincial capital, but, while by no means a bad place to spend a day in transit, nobody would pretend there is much to see or do here. Moving on, if you can resist heading straight to Sanya to work on your tan, spend a couple of days hopping down between the towns along Hainan's east coast . This is the part of Hainan longest under Han dominion, and it's a good way to get the feel of the island.

Eating and drinking
Perhaps because Haikou is essentially a mainland Chinese colony, food here is not as exotic as you'd hope for. The quantity and variety of ingredients on display at market stalls is promising: green, unhusked coconuts (sold as a drink, but seldom used in cooking); thick fish steaks, mussels, eels, crab and prawns; mangoes, pineapples, bananas, watermelons, guavas, plums, star fruit and jak fruit; and, everywhere, piles of seasonal green vegetables. But somehow, these never make it into restaurants , which - aside from hotels - are anyway in short supply. In the streets near the bus station - Daying Lu in particular - you'll find a number of inexpensive seafood and hotpot places: Shuihou Doujiang Dawang, open 24-hours on the corner of Jinchang Lu, has excellent shuijiao, rice packets, buns and soya milk; while east along Daying Lu, Wuge Paidang is a fine, mid-price seafood and fowl restaurant. Do & Me Fried Chicken, next to the Overseas Chinese Hotel, also has acceptable burgers, while Tiantian, a small bar just west of the Nanhai Hotel, has the best coffee and cakes in town.

Getting around
Haikou downtown area forms a compact block between waterfront Changti Dadao and the airport , about 2km south off Jichang Lu. The centre is marked by a busy mess of wide one-way traffic flows and pedestrian overpasses surrounding Haikou Park , with the most interesting shopping districts in the northerly old colonial quarter along Jiefang Lu and Boai Bei Lu. The New Port is north off Changti Dadao on Xingang Lu, where most ferries from Hong Kong and the mainland pull in; those from Beihai in Guangxi sometimes use the Xiuying Wharf , 5km farther east along Binhai Dadao. Whichever you end up at, high-speed and regular buses to Sanya will be waiting, thus avoiding the need to stay in Haikou. Arriving by road from elsewhere on the island, the long-distance bus station is centrally positioned south of Haikou Park on Daying Houlu, with short-range minibuses dropping off all over the city's outskirts, principally at east and west depots.

The crowded central roads don't make Haikou's city bus service a very good way of getting around, except for outlying transit points (bus #6 runs from the west bus depot, links the two ports on Changti Dadao, and then turns down Datong Lu; while buses #1 and #11 run from the east bus depot to the centre along Haifu Dadao). Taxis are much faster and so absurdly plentiful that you have only to pause by the kerb for one to pull up instantly. They cost from ¥10 to hire, and a trip right across the city shouldn't be much more than twice this.

There's a total lack of information about the island in Haikou, with hotel tour agents only geared to getting you to Sanya as fast as possible. If you plan to explore Hainan's backwaters, pick up a map of the island from hawkers or kiosks; some include spreads of Haikou, Sanya and Tongshi, along with detailed road maps of the island including even minor sights marked in English.

The City
More than anything, Haikou is a truly tropical city, complete with palm-lined streets, something particularly striking if you've just arrived from a miserable northern Chinese winter. Noisy but laid-back, it's also pleasantly shabby - even in upmarket areas, you only have to walk down the side streets to find the usual Chinese jumble of fast-food stalls and hawkers, small trestle tables spread with cheap crockery, clothes and household goods. The old quarter , boxed in by Boai Bei Lu, Jiefang Lu and Datong Lu, is the best area to stroll through with its grid of century-old colonial architecture, here partially restored and functioning as stores and businesses. It's especially good in the evening when the streets are brightly lit and bursting with people out shopping, eating and socializing. Otherwise, Haikou Park (¥2) is small but quite pleasant, with cracked stone statues overhung by shrubbery reputedly from a vanished Ming-dynasty temple.

Haikou has just two formal sights, either of which will fill you in on Hainan's position in Han Chinese history. About 5km west of the downtown area off Shugang Dadao, a park and stone sculptures of lions and guards surround Hai Rui Mu , tomb of the virtuous Ming-dynasty official Hai Rui (daily 9am-4pm; ¥5) - take bus #3 from Changdi Dadao. Hai Rui's honesty, which earned him exile during his lifetime, caused a furore in the 1960s when historian Wu Han wrote a play called The Dismissal of Hai Rui, a parody of events surrounding the treatment of Marshall Peng Dehui , who had criticized Mao's Great Leap Forward. The play's supression and the subsequent arrest of Wu Han, who happened to be a friend of Deng Xiaoping, are generally considered to be the opening events of the Cultural Revolution.

On the other side of town is Wugong Ci , the Five Officials' Memorial Temple, 2.5km southeast of the centre along Haifu Dadao (daily 8.30am-5pm; ¥8; bus #11 or #1). This brightly decorated complex was built during the late Qing to honour Li Deyu, Li Gang, Li Guang, Hu Chuan and Zhao Ding, Tang men of letters who, yet again, were banished here after rashly criticizing their government. There's also a hall in the grounds commemorating Hainan's most famous exile, the rather better-known Song-dynasty poet Su Dongpo , who spent his later years near Danzhou , in the island's northwest.

HAIKOU is Hainan's steamy capital, set at the north of the island and separated from Guangdong Province by the 30-kilometre-wide Qiongzhou Channel. Business centre, main port and first stop for newly arrived holiday-makers and hopeful migrants alike, Haikou has all the atmosphere of a modern, typical Southeast Asian city.

There's a smattering of French colonial architecture, a few parks and monuments, gleaming new highrises, broad streets choked with traffic and pedestrians, and the all-pervading spirit of wilfully glib commerce. An indication of the ethos driving Haikou is that nobody seems to be a local: officials, businessmen and tourists are all from the mainland, while Li, Miao and Hakka flock from southern Hainan to hawk trinkets, as do the Muslim Hui who run the moneychanging businesses - all drawn by the opportunities that the city represents. Energetic yet soulless, Haikou feels a little more spacious and friendly than the average provincial capital, but, while by no means a bad place to spend a day in transit, nobody would pretend there is much to see or do here. Moving on, if you can resist heading straight to Sanya to work on your tan, spend a couple of days hopping down between the towns along Hainan's east coast . This is the part of Hainan longest under Han dominion, and it's a good way to get the feel of the island.

Eating and drinking
Perhaps because Haikou is essentially a mainland Chinese colony, food here is not as exotic as you'd hope for. The quantity and variety of ingredients on display at market stalls is promising: green, unhusked coconuts (sold as a drink, but seldom used in cooking); thick fish steaks, mussels, eels, crab and prawns; mangoes, pineapples, bananas, watermelons, guavas, plums, star fruit and jak fruit; and, everywhere, piles of seasonal green vegetables. But somehow, these never make it into restaurants , which - aside from hotels - are anyway in short supply. In the streets near the bus station - Daying Lu in particular - you'll find a number of inexpensive seafood and hotpot places: Shuihou Doujiang Dawang, open 24-hours on the corner of Jinchang Lu, has excellent shuijiao, rice packets, buns and soya milk; while east along Daying Lu, Wuge Paidang is a fine, mid-price seafood and fowl restaurant. Do & Me Fried Chicken, next to the Overseas Chinese Hotel, also has acceptable burgers, while Tiantian, a small bar just west of the Nanhai Hotel, has the best coffee and cakes in town.

Getting around
Haikou downtown area forms a compact block between waterfront Changti Dadao and the airport , about 2km south off Jichang Lu. The centre is marked by a busy mess of wide one-way traffic flows and pedestrian overpasses surrounding Haikou Park , with the most interesting shopping districts in the northerly old colonial quarter along Jiefang Lu and Boai Bei Lu. The New Port is north off Changti Dadao on Xingang Lu, where most ferries from Hong Kong and the mainland pull in; those from Beihai in Guangxi sometimes use the Xiuying Wharf , 5km farther east along Binhai Dadao. Whichever you end up at, high-speed and regular buses to Sanya will be waiting, thus avoiding the need to stay in Haikou. Arriving by road from elsewhere on the island, the long-distance bus station is centrally positioned south of Haikou Park on Daying Houlu, with short-range minibuses dropping off all over the city's outskirts, principally at east and west depots.

The crowded central roads don't make Haikou's city bus service a very good way of getting around, except for outlying transit points (bus #6 runs from the west bus depot, links the two ports on Changti Dadao, and then turns down Datong Lu; while buses #1 and #11 run from the east bus depot to the centre along Haifu Dadao). Taxis are much faster and so absurdly plentiful that you have only to pause by the kerb for one to pull up instantly. They cost from ¥10 to hire, and a trip right across the city shouldn't be much more than twice this.

There's a total lack of information about the island in Haikou, with hotel tour agents only geared to getting you to Sanya as fast as possible. If you plan to explore Hainan's backwaters, pick up a map of the island from hawkers or kiosks; some include spreads of Haikou, Sanya and Tongshi, along with detailed road maps of the island including even minor sights marked in English.

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