Haikou

Capital of Hainan, the tropical island province. Calm coastal city with a colonial-era arcade district and a launchpad to the beach destinations of Sanya, Boao and Xinglong.

Haikou sits at the northern tip of Hainan island and is the provincial capital of China's southernmost and smallest province. Where Sanya, 300 kilometres south by the ring highway, is the domestic beach resort — brash, expensive, and packed from December to February — Haikou is the workaday side of the island: administrative, commercial, and considerably more navigable for independent travellers.

The most characterful part of the city is the Old Arcade Street district, centred on Zhongshan Road and its surrounding streets. The arcaded shophouses — qilou — were built in the 1920s and 1930s, when Hainanese merchants returned from Southeast Asia with capital and construction ideas. The style is a Chinese-colonial hybrid: shopfronts set back under continuous covered walkways, upper floors with shuttered balconies and decorative facades. Much of the district has been preserved and restored; it functions as a pedestrian shopping and dining area with a genuine historical atmosphere rather than a pure tourist recreation.

The Five Officials' Memorial Temple commemorates five senior officials of the Tang and Song dynasties who were exiled to Hainan — then regarded as the far edge of the civilised world — and nevertheless contributed to the island's cultural development. The complex is a quiet, well-maintained garden with memorial halls, inscribed stones, and shade. Hai Rui's Tomb honours a famously incorruptible Ming official whose posthumous reputation oscillated between rehabilitation and denunciation through Chinese political history.

Holiday Beach on the western coast of the city is the main urban beach: coconut palms, warm water, and a busy seafront promenade. The beach is popular with locals and considerably less crowded than Sanya's resort strips.

Hainan was designated a Free Trade Port in 2020, with a phased rollout of duty-free shopping quotas for Chinese citizens shopping on the island. Several large duty-free shopping complexes have opened in Haikou and Sanya. These cater almost entirely to the domestic market.

The island is accessible via Haikou Meilan airport with domestic connections across mainland China, and via the Hainan Ring High-Speed Railway that connects Haikou to Sanya in 90 minutes, stopping at coastal towns along both the east and west coasts.