13: resurrection!

finally back to spending some time with the blog! i've been able to piece some slideshows together from various roadtrips, but i'm having trouble figuring out how to distribute them. my latest experiment (via youtube) is below. if it works, look for more soon...

1: to the ferry


we left shenzhen early on mayday to beat the holiday traffic, stopping for lunch at a typical roadside restaurant: my friend gan, his niece, and myself. we reached the port below zhanjiang about 3pm, and loaded the jeep onto one of the armada of ferries there; it was hard to believe that so much rust could float! trip over to hainan (south sea) island was about an hour, but time spent loading and unloading put our arrival close to sunset. we were met by a friend of gan's, who had arranged for a hotel for us in the city of haikou (sea mouth), and took us to a bustling "holiday seafood" place for dinner. the following morning, we had a dim sum breakfast, and set out on the course his friend had arranged for us.

2: bo'ao beach


bo'ao beach has been considerably spiffed up for prominent businessmen and the international trade conference that is held there; everyone mentions that "bill gates comes here". there are a few snazzy hotel compounds, and a strange new bhuddist temple/cultural heritage complex: it seems the government funds the reconstruction of religious compounds, as a centerpiece of larger development schemes. the temple compound recalls the existence of an earlier one at the site, venerated because of the confluence of three rivers and the sea. monks from here preserved many species of lotus; japan recently returned a variety some 2,000 years old, retrieved and propogated from seeds found in an archaeological sifting of a shipwreck there, that traced back to this site. the event is toasted with an on-site lotus museum.

we have lunch in the old village of bo'ao, in a bustling indoor/outdoor choose-your-own-from-the-fishtank restaurant that seemed more greek than chinese: crabs and shrimp and mussels and snails and things, snakes, eels and schools of fish that i've never seen before. you choose 'em, they steam 'em (or wok 'em) and dose 'em with mounds of garlic, peppers, cilantro, green onion- everything but lemon; for some reason, it's not part of the chinese repertoire- something i had only begun to notice.

gan's friend had arranged our swank beachfront hotel- newly finished and strangely empty for a holiday weekend. it was at the edge of town, and a late afternoon walk revealed that the adjoining beachfront was watermelon fields. but not for long, probably...

3: end of the world


4: nanshan beach


5: bai ma jing


6: ancient salt works


7: dong po academy


8: dinner in haikou