The tropical island of Hainan
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If you like traveling, you will like Shangrilá. A different book from trips, in which the protagonist, the author who offers you this information about Beijing, penetrates in some of the most remote regions of China. In this succession of mountains that spread to the south of Sichuan and the northwest of Yunnan, inhabited by related peoples of some form with the Tibetan culture, as the Yi, the Moso, the Naxi or the Bai. Following the track that the always damned Yi mark, it will finish bottled in the Shangrilá search. |
Hainan is a tropical island placed in the south end of China. In spite of his scarce size, 28.000 square kilometers, and of there was distant only a hundred of kilometers of the populous city of Canton, it has always been considered to be a separate world. A natural and human border, the end of the grounds known before the immense ocean that spreads to the south of China.
Although the first Chinese came to Hainan it does already more than two thousand years, his bellicose inhabitants pushed back with energy all the attempts for conquering them, supported in a mountainous interior where there abound the forests and a wide region of salt marshes infested with tropical pests. That's why it is still the hearth of two of the minorities most typical of China: the Li (nearly one million) and the Miao (40.000), with numerous villages where the life passes of traditional form. In the rest of the island the colonists centuries have been transforming throughout the centuries, and the types of his settlers will make us think that we are not in China, but in Vietnam or a nearby country, with added of that the typical conical hats of straw of the peasants of Hainan are decorated by the role of the magazines, of course to waterproof him, what gives him a frankly original aspect.
The most important characteristic of Hainan, which it has thrown to the reputation in the rest of China, is not nevertheless the presence these Miao and Li progeny of his first settlers, but his beaches. Since in fact, Hainan is provided with kilometers and kilometers of beaches of thin sand, the majority still without exploiting.
Between these beaches that seem endless, occasionally the figure of a hotel arises. The hotels, out of the urban centers, are still so separated, that almost look like an oasis in the sand desert.
In Hainan there are two important cities: Haikou, the capital and Sanya, both connected to the rest of China for numerous flights. Although the provincial government wants to compare it with Hawaii, and little by little it is turning into the election destination for the most relaxed congresses or the affectionate adventures, the true thing is that in Hainan, the wild and tropical nature still has not been dominated by the hand of the man. To visit it is, still, a good option for the traveler who visits China.
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