Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

*For all our pictures of Hainan, click here.

So, fair readers, allow me to pick up from where I left off last.

Aerial view over the center of the jade province, by Evan

We had just experienced Xinglong, and all its various overseas Chinese bounties and made our way to Lingshui (陵水縣, click the link for coordinates), just in time to celebrate simultaneously the halfway point of our trip and coincidentally the point furthest south we will go for the year. It was at this point that we parted from the coastal Han-heavy portions of the island to make a trek through the mountains and go searching for the indigenous Hlai people, who occupy 55% of the island’s territory but comprise only 12% of the population.

Speaking of the Hlai, on the way into Lingshui, we had stopped in a little restaurant for rice noodles and tea, as was our custom on the island, and struck up a conversation with the lethargic owner of the shop. “Those minorities used to paint their faces and be very wild. Now they’re all sinicized. They’ve made progress! (他們少數民族以前都喜歡塗花臉，很亂！可現在漢化得差不多了，他們進步了!)” Immediately we were afraid he’d be right, and that the minorities would just be boring Han replicas, but I figured, what does he know anyway? I bet he never goes into the mountains!

Outside of just the minority culture, we had had enough of “modern China” on the fringes of the island, despite access to intermittently beautiful beaches to be enjoyed there. Lingshui itself boasted a tourism alley that called to mind the atrocities that will be committed upon local culture in the name of the brand new “international tourism island (國際旅游島)” policy. We were ready to enjoy the Hainan, a place the Chinese have nicknamed Qiong (瓊), or fine jade, due to its boundless verdancy, and about which the famous poet Su Dongpo (蘇東坡) wrote the following verses when he was banished to the then-fringe colony:

九死南荒吾不悔，玆遊奇絕冠平生

Though I may die nine (many) deaths in the southern wilderness, I shall not regret;
For in this moment I have reached the apex of my life of exquisite travels. (more…)



Jour 182 (23/03/10)

Lingshui(陵水)-Diaoluoshan(吊罗山)

Province du Hainan(海南省)

- 60km -

Voilà, c’est parti! Nous attaquons la deuxième moitié de notre périple. Nous roulions auparavant vers le sud, nous évoluerons désormais vers le nord. Nous longions auparavant les côtes plates à 70%, nous traverserons désormais l’intérieur des terres, montagneuses à 70%.

Tableau de maître dans le couloir de l'hôtel.

(more…)

By Evan

Mr. Zhuang on the left with his chef/farmer cousin, by Andy

Way back in Haikou we were pleasantly surprised to find cheap, pretty good coffee brewing next door to us. As it turned out, the coffee was a product of Hainan, grown in a little place called Xinglong (興隆) on the southern coast. Now, Andy being a veritable coffee fiend, and myself not trailing too far behind, we decided on the spot that we must go to this place that produces the godly black drink and shake hands with the men who dare to take on tea.

As it happened, we weren’t far from Xinglong when we camped on the immaculate beach, and it was planned that we should arrive there early to rock that big caffeine buzz early enough to keep us from sleeping. At breakfast in Wanning city (萬寧市) though, which was complemented with 2 hot cups of 1.5 yuan local coffee (amazingly enough, the locals have taken to drinking it, and it’s a menu item along with all sorts of tea), something else tickled my guts the wrong way, and it was slow going to coffeeville, frequent stops under palm trees the length of the short 34 km day. When finally we arrived just before dinnertime, we were greeted by a very unusual sight.

On my map, Xinglong had been signified by a little dot, which usually indicates sleepy village. The place we came to was, quite to the contrary, a very developed little hub of tourism and shopping on the middle of an otherwise radically rural route. Huge villa complexes sprawled beyond patches of palm trees. Just past the town demarcation line, a faded billboard on a yawning construction site boasted of the imminent construction of Beijing Village (北京村), complete with pictures of the concrete boxes to emerge and official catch phrases from the Olympics. We had now entered the twilight zone. (more…)

By Evan

*For less verbiage and more color, see all our pics and videos from Hainan so far here

Picking up from the last post, we ended up spending two days in Haikou for post-train R&R and a little exploration, even though it turned out to be yet another unwalkable, giant, concrete crapper overlooking the murky strait that divides it from the mainland, with a few sprinklings of palm trees here and there. After this long and so many places traveled, the ghastly state of the place is not at all a surprise, but my heart pains to think that they build the capital of their island paradise to look exactly the same as their monuments to megalomania in the Gobi Desert! After our nice dinner with some long-time residents from back stateside who follow this silly blog (thanks to Nicki, Erik, and Marian for a nice time and good advice), it was with tremendous relief that we made our exit to the southeast, even though it meant beating tropical sun and a dead-on headwind for 105 km. Incidentally, it’s redeeming to finally be in weather where I feel natural while the two northern nancy boys hyperventilate.

Speaking of northern nancy boys and this tropical island, thankfully the locals have derived a cultural phenomenonof which I never thought the Chinese capable: drinking cold tea (any self-respecting Chinese can reel off a list of dangers to health posed by cold beverage consumption, which was told to them by their grandmother) to beat the heat. After passing innumerable little tea houses on the way down, we flopped off the hot highway around the apex of the heat and into some plastic lawnchairs for tall glasses of bottomless iced red tea (turns out they use Lipton, which I still think is crazy, but it’s the ice that counts here).

Tilapia farmers of Wenchang, by Andy

As always, we were hounded immediately by the group of men sitting around their table playing cards with the same lines as always: “Where are you from? (是哪裡人!) You speak Chinese! (你會說中國話!),” etc. etc. ad nauseum. I responded with my usual puerile joke that always gets an LBX laugh or two: “Yes, we speak Mandarin, but we haven’t quite mastered your [fill in local area] language (普通話沒問題，只是還不會你們某地方話)” (more…)

By Evan

For the last month or so, especially during the particularly biting cold portions of this unseemly winter (yes, climate change really is a vast conspiracy), all we could think of was how great it would be to finally arrive in Hainan Island, the PRC’s largest island and southernmost territory. Granted, the island isn’t the most LBX place in the world, but the majority population is Han Chinese. Really though, we just wanted to ride our bikes around a big tropical island for a few weeks, camping on beaches and eating coconuts/bananas/seafood/whatever else the lovely minorities here have about.

So, with the intention of coming to Hainan as fast as possible, we lit out of Guangzhou like bats out of hell (the “out of hell” portion to be taken literally), intending to make the 450 km push to Zhanjiang (湛江) in four days, where the internet reported there would be ferry service direct to Haikou (海口), the capital of Hainan. Do I need to mention the maxim about mice and men and their foolish plans anymore? First, the only cultural activity we had intended on the roll toward Zhanjiang, the watchtower buildings built by returning overseas Chinese in Taishan and Kaiping (台山與開平僑鄉的碉樓) turned out to already be touristified to hell, with 50 yuan tickets just to see the old ones. Well, *&#@ that! We won’t pay! Other than the historical implications of passing through the area that produced 70+% of all early Chinese immigration to China, a few ragged watchtowers on the side of the road, and a higher preponderance of Western Unions (西聯匯款), it was a bust. Then a one-two combo of rain and creaky knees slowed our progress yet another day. (more…)