Hainan Island, Part 1

Touring China’s Hawaii, Preflight

Photo by author.

This week, we begin another TEL adventure, this time about a longer trip during my eventful first summer as a foreign teacher exploring his new world. Before I introduce the two main characters that accompanied me, let me give you a preview of coming attractions:

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Taking excerpts from China Bound:

I couldn’t know it at the time but I was about to embark on a wonderful, most memorable experience.  A week later, following my return to Zhengzhou, I would email to my family and friends:

I know a place where there is no winter, no smog, no driveby shootings, no obnoxiously loud car stereos, no war news - no war.  Hainan Island is located at the very southern tip of China.  Sometimes called the “Eastern Hawaii”, it could well be argued that, since Hainan Island was developed long before Hawaii became a major tourist attraction, it might be more appropriate to refer to Hawaii as the “Western Hainan”.  Hainan Island is a place where bananas, papayas, pineapples, and many other tropical fruits and flowers grow in glorious profusion, with incredibly blue skies and clear green ocean water and all of the best features of rainforests and golden beaches.  (Even the mosquitoes are friendly.  I can report from personal experience that it is true that the mosquitoes don’t bite visitors; they bite only the natives.  It was the third day of my stay before I apparently became acceptable.)  The climate is the sort that Florida and southern California claim (and neither has), the land is lovely, the people are friendly and hospitable to strangers, and the women are beautiful, combining the best qualities of Polynesian and Chinese girls.

How far south is Hainan?  Well, if you go to the southern tip of the island, the city of Sanya, and step into the ocean (the South China Sea), Viet Nam is to your right, the Philippines are to your left, and, straight ahead, there is nothing but water until you get to Indonesia.

I was invited by Ellen (Li Qin) to travel with her and stay with her family for a few days.  With this type of invitation, you get the whole package.  It means that you are literally treated like family.  You live with the family, eat with them, and are given tours, introductions, and personal histories so you really get to know them.  You see their schools, their jobs, their relatives, their friends, their favorite restaurants, their gardens, their neighbors, their pets … everything.

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Beginning at the beginning, I was enjoying the summer break between semesters at my university. I had just finished my first six months as a foreign teacher and was using this splendid opportunity to explore more of my new expat world - and more of my inner world, also. First, let me introduce my delightful travel companions, two Chinese girls with the English names of Angeline and Ellen.

On these occasions [campus activities], I always made several new friends.  Even when I wished to simply be part of the audience and not detract from the main event, a foreigner was far too conspicuous to remain undetected.  Curiosity and the desire to practice English with a native speaker always resulted in several students approaching me.  From these chance encounters, we gained a constant inflow of new members at the Breakfast Club.  That particular day’s new friends included a lovely girl, Angeline, who spoke excellent English.  Angeline was my first student friend whose major was “teaching Chinese to foreigners”.  In the coming weeks, I would see Angeline many times as we became good friends.  

And then there was Ellen, who was instrumental in preparing me to take over the class of freshmen English majors from another foreign teacher who was called home in mid-semester due to a family emergency.

Ellen was not from Zhengzhou or even from Henan province.  Her hometown was on Hainan Island, the island province located at the very southern tip of China, detached from the mainland.  Hainan Island, previously unknown to me, was the Chinese equivalent to America’s Hawaii.  Hainan Island was in a tropical region that was completely different in climate, history, and culture from Henan province.  

I couldn’t know it at the time but my two new friends, Angeline and Ellen, were to play important roles in an upcoming summer adventure.  Fate (or fate) was not yet done with me.

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Leading up to the the departure date…

In late June, I had received an email from my Hainan Island student friend, Ellen, with an invitation:

Last time on the phone you have told me that you would not spend the

whole summer vacation in America, and I am very glad to hear that. Because, in that case, I can have more chances to communicate with you. You are the first real foreign friend of me. I know that you may have a lot of Chinese friends, and I am very happy to be one of them.

I also hope that if you have time, please go to Hainan--my hometown, a very beautiful place. I am very happy to be your guide. My parents haven't seen a foreigner before, and they will be very happy to let you live in our house.

I was intrigued by this offer.  I knew nothing about Hainan Island except that this province was a large island located off the southern tip of mainland China.  Like our Hawaii, Hainan province actually consisted of many islands and took its name from the largest one, Hainan, where almost all the population was concentrated.  The possibility of visiting a new part of China was appealing, especially a tropical island.  Ellen and I began discussing details.  Over the next couple of weeks, we met several times and talked about a possible trip.  As I learned more, I was increasingly eager to see Hainan.  If we could arrange everything, we decided that I would visit Hainan Island for a week in July, staying with Ellen’s family at their home in the city of Qionghai, (pronounced “Chong High”).  

Fortuitously, the timing was perfect.  I had committed to training the group of museum guides during the first week of July but Ellen would also be staying on the campus for several weeks after the semester ended.  She was part of a group of students who had been selected for special training and preparation to represent our university at a national speech contest to be held in the fall.  Thus, she would not be leaving for her home until after I had completed the week-long training session for the museum guides.  This meant that we could travel together.  

With the tentative decision to visit Hainan Island made, two new issues immediately presented themselves: Who would I travel with, and how would we travel?  There was no difficulty in getting to Hainan Island; I would travel with Ellen.  But after my stay ended, she would be remaining with her family for the rest of her summer holiday.  This implied that, after my visit, I would have to return to Zhengzhou by myself.  My friend Karen from the Foreign Affairs Office expressed her concerns about a foreigner who spoke no Chinese traveling alone halfway across China – especially if I was traveling by train as I planned - merely “depending on the kindness of strangers”.  It was true that I was on holiday so the university had no official involvement.  During the summer vacation period, the foreign teachers were free to travel as they wished so I did not need the FAO’s approval.  Still, Karen’s concerns were legitimate.  With only a few Chinese phrases in my vocabulary, I had to admit that I didn’t feel very confident about traveling solo.  Both as a friend and as a representative of the university, Karen certainly didn’t want one of the ZZU foreign teachers getting into difficulties over the summer holiday.

The obvious solution to this dilemma was to find a second travel companion, someone who could accompany me on the return trip when Ellen remained in Qionghai.  I first checked with Dylan and Helen, my two closest non-student friends, but they were not available.  With full-time jobs, getting away for a week on such short notice was not possible for either of them.  I widened the search.  Various candidates were considered but, for different reasons, no one was quite right.  Most of my student friends had already made their plans for the summer holiday and were not free to travel with me.  For others, the expense of travel and a week of touring Hainan Island forced them to decline.  

Finally, a candidate surfaced who met the criteria.  I learned that my new friend Angeline was also in Ellen’s group of gifted students who were being given the special speech contest training.  Angeline was a Henan native whose family lived in a nearby city but, when Ellen and I mentioned the trip to her, we learned that she had relatives living in Haikou, Hainan Island’s capital city.  Angeline agreed to join us.  She would enjoy the opportunity to visit her relatives and see Hainan Island, then could accompany me on the return to Zhengzhou.  

That first issue being successfully resolved, we turned next to the second, travel arrangements.  I was in favor of making this trip by train.  In addition to saving money (compared with the price of a plane ticket), I wanted to see more of China.  Based upon my one brief train trip to Kaifeng in May, I visualized experiencing the different regions of China from a slow-moving train while we traversed half the length of the country, traveling from Henan province in the north central region to the southernmost tip of mainland China.  Then, after getting off the train, we would take a ferry to cross the thirty-kilometer strait to reach Hainan Island.  Ellen estimated that the trip would take about 50 hours to complete, if there were no delays or breakdowns, and if we did not have to wait too long to catch the ferry.

However, it quickly became evident that Ellen did not share my enthusiasm for making this journey by train.  As a junior finishing her third year at ZZU, this trip was nothing new to her.  In three years, she had made this cross-country trek multiple times.  She assured me that, while it might sound like a great adventure, it would, in reality, be a very long, very hot train ride that would leave us exhausted before we even arrived at Hainan Island.  

Ellen pointed out that this proposed trip would be in the period of maximum summer heat.  Also, while the crowds would not be comparable to the hordes traveling by train during the May golden week, we would nonetheless be swept along in the seasonal mass migration as hundreds of thousands of college students were adding their numbers to the already full trains.  For Ellen, the prospect of two days on a train under such conditions, then waiting for the ferry and taking a long ferryboat ride to reach Haikou, was decidedly unattractive.  

One additional concern was that our proposed summer trip was in typhoon season and she clearly didn’t relish the idea of riding a ferry on the rough seas that would occur if we happened to be traveling when one of these storms passed through the area.  (I learned that typhoons were simply hurricanes by another name.  In the Eastern Hemisphere, hurricanes are called typhoons.)

Reluctantly, I had to accept Ellen’s objections.  If my experienced guide strongly urged me to forego making this long trip by train, I would defer to her judgment.  Even if it was not as romantic, it was unquestionably more practical that we travel by plane.  From the Zhengzhou airport, we could safely and comfortably fly directly to Haikou in a few hours.  I think that both Ellen and Angeline were quietly relieved by my acceptance of travel by plane.  In addition to all the other reasons, Ellen was understandably in a hurry to get home, but I could tell that a cross-country train trip in the summer heat held little appeal for Angeline also.  

Karen happily approved of this modified plan so I made my commitment.  Ellen and Angeline would make all the travel arrangements, including purchasing the plane tickets and setting the itinerary for seeing Hainan Island.  All I would have to do was load my trusty backpack with clothes, camera, passport, and cash and be ready to travel at the appointed time.

A few weeks later, I was writing in my journal:

Today, I would leave for Hainan Island with Ellen and Angeline.  Now, I would visit a very different China.  I was beginning to grasp that I would be entering a new region with a different culture and traditions.  Obviously, a major part of these differences would be due to the tropical climate and local history of Hainan Island but, as always, population played a significant role.  If the country of China had the world’s largest population, my own Henan province (with nearly 100 million people) had the largest population of all of China’s provinces, plus one of the highest densities.  Zhengzhou and its satellite communities held nearly seven million people.  In comparison, Hainan Island had a much less concentrated population.  I had read that the size of Hainan Island is about the same as the country of Belgium in Europe.  All that space for only eight million people?  By Henan standards, Hainan Island was almost undeveloped.  

By the way, over time, I had learned that the names of no less than six of the twenty-three Chinese provinces all began with the letter H and sounded quite similar to my untrained ear.  Thus, I had to learn to distinguish my own Henan from Hunan and Hainan Island provinces.  Careful enunciation was critical.  Then, there were Hebei and Hubei and Heilongjiang provinces.  Back in my classroom, I had told my students of America’s enunciation-based revenge – the nine M states.  In rapid order, I would ask them to pronounce the names of Missouri, Mississippi, Minnesota, Michigan, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, and New Mexico.

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Tune in next week, TEL readers, as the journey begins.

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