Tropical Hainan – China’s Hawaii

Bill Brown and his son feed a monkey on the highlands of Five Finger Mountain City.

After repairing a flat tire the next morning (we had four or five every week), I spent 11 hours driving the 160 km to Xinglong, and its “hot springs famous at home and abroad.” We stopped for lunch in a village where young women stood in the middle of the road waving towels to attract tour bus drivers to their little diner. Even the simplest dishes were expensive, but the portions were generous, the food delicious – and the bill was half what I expected! I told the girl she’d miscalculated and she grinned and said, “Menu prices are for rich tour groups, not for friends.” In appreciation, I took photos of the girls with our sons and later mailed them copies.

Our sons had long anticipated visiting Monkey Island, which we reached by ferry, but which today has China’s longest over-water cable car (2,138 meters). We thought we’d have to search for the macaques but they came after us instead. When we ran out of peanuts, the monkeys climbed over the boys’ jackets and pawed their pockets, scaring my son Matthew. We raced for the gate, macaques on our tail.

We bought two oysters from fishermen, who pried them open and presented each boy with a pearl, which I thought fitting. Whereas Americans say a child is “the apple of my eye,” Chinese say he or she is “a bright pearl in my palm.”