Hainan

史History & character

Hainan is China's tropical island province, slightly larger than Belgium, sitting in the South China Sea off the southern coast of Guangdong. For most of imperial Chinese history it was a place of exile — Su Dongpo wrote some of his finest poetry while banished here in the 11th century. The Li and Miao indigenous peoples retained autonomy in the central mountain districts well into the 20th century.

After 1988, when Hainan was separated from Guangdong and made its own province, it was designated a Special Economic Zone. Tourism development concentrated on Sanya at the southern tip — palm-fringed beaches, duty-free shopping, conference resorts, and an increasingly cosmopolitan dining scene drawing Russian, Korean, and Southeast Asian visitors. Haikou in the north is the political capital and has a more substantial colonial-era and early-Republican heritage in its old town.

In recent years Hainan has been redesignated as a free-trade zone with progressively expanded duty-free quotas, intended as a "Chinese Hawaii" both for domestic and inbound tourism. The interior — Wuzhi Mountain, Diaoluo Mountain, Limu Mountain — retains rainforest, Li traditional villages, and small-scale tea production.