Chapter 8
East Coast - From Wenchang To Qionghai
Wenchang relatives and their rustic lives
At eleven-forty on Wednesday morning, youngest cousin Guo Tai turns up shortly after I have settled my account with the Longquan receptionist. During the journey to our ancestral village, he acquaints me, at my biding, with information on the other members of the family such as their names. His mother is eighty-two years old. Guo Ping’s wife has just flown to Singapore to be with their daughter for the impending delivery of the latter’s baby. She will be staying for two months.
Travelling from north to south in broad daylight, I can now see that Xiayang Village lies on the same left side of 201 Provincial Road as Houling Village. Ever since my last visit, I have been under the impression they are located on opposite sides. The two narrower branch roads leading to them run parallel to each other, and are only three hundred metres apart. Houling Village is located almost beside the main road while Xiayang Village is located two kilometres east to it. The road to Xiayang Village is frequently traversed by cargo-laden trucks from southern and southwestern Wenchang City to Qinglan Port on the east. The government will soon be repairing the uneven nameless road, says Guo Tai.
Road to Wenchang downtown
路到文昌镇
We arrive at one-thirty in the early afternoon. The slight drizzle has ceased, and the weather is fine. Lunch is set before us. Because of their early working hours, the other family members have had their lunch at eleven-thirty in the late morning. Unlike the previous visit, only the immediate members are present. No firework is lit to inform the distant relations and friends in the village. That is my secret wish too. Before we depart at four, we visit Guo Ping’s pepper farm at the junction of the nameless road and the short unpaved lane leading to Xiayang Village. Of the two hundred and twenty pepper vines curling around their supporting poles, only about one hundred and eighty withstood the recent destructive winds. Those weakened stems of collapsed vines however shrivelled and died.
Second Cousin’s farm is just across the pot-holed road. He has more pepper vines than his older brother. Pepper vines occupy about ten thousand hectares of Hainan land. More than 1.3 million kilograms of pepper are produced annually in Hainan, accounting for half of China’s production. But other crops take up much more land, some four hundred thousand hectares. They include cashew, sugar-cane, and tea. Sugarcanes propagate rapidly in the moist tropical conditions of Hainan. Lemongrass seeds also thrive. Used to flavour soup, the aromatic leaves can be harvested six months later. And, after reshooting, they can be pruned every three months.
Guo Dian lives alone in the patch-work wooden house, keeping a vigilant watch over thousands of frogs bred for sale to restaurants. Each of the two long breeding pools measures forty metres in length and five metres in width, and is subdivided with partition walls into smaller ponds. With no prior experience in the business, he bravely dived into it after hearing fantastic financial tales from friends. He is evidence of the quiet economic revolution gradually taking hold in Hainan.
A jackfruit tree, seven lychee trees, and a couple of fruiting chiku (sapodilla) trees are scattered around the compound. But having no time to pluck and sell them, he leaves the ripe overhanging chiku fruits for the birds. These fruits are one of my favourite. Salivating, I look for a ripe one to taste. But the birds have beaten me, pecking and destroying many. Truck drivers sometimes stop and help themselves to the maturing fruits from the trees bordering the road, Guo Dian says. Fifteen areca palms are cultivated “for fun”. On the ground is a discarded branch of areca fruits. That is about ten or twenty RMB worth of nuts, according to my mental calculation.
Village life in my maternal Xiayang Village
乡村生活在我母亲的下洋村
Life has improved over the last two decades since Hainan became a “special” economic zone. It was precarious before. Food was scarce. Guo Dian’s fourteen-year old daughter drowned during the nineteen-eighties when the overloaded boat she was in capsized during a trip to collect shellfish at the mouth of the tidal river that runs near the back of Xiayang Village.
Five decades earlier, twelve-year old Mum nearly drowned in the same river when her overloaded boat also capsized for the same reason. Fortunately for her, her mother pulled her to safety.
Guo Tai drives me to the Pang’s ancestral house. It is still bright at five in the late afternoon. After surveying the interior of the compound, we move to the front gate, which is now open. In front of us is a beautiful scene. About two metres in width, a cement lane connects the other houses on my left to the main provincial road on my right. Beyond it is a reasonably well laid-out garden of tall trees, beneath which are tables and chairs for the few residents to relax and socialise. There is a huge tree. Is that the tree from which I had caught a cicada during my childhood? After the garden is a large green field, sprouting with creeping vegetables. On rows of earthen mounts, these vegetables need well-drained soil for growth. Some banana trees are on my left while on my right is a thick clump of sugarcanes. Far away are coconut palms. The villagers here are obviously self-sufficient.
Country life in my paternal Houling Village
乡村生活在我父亲的后岭村
When it is time for us to depart, I feel a sense of sadness. I do not know when or if ever I will return. I am sixty-two. Do I have the time and freedom to travel? As I recover from my passing thoughts, I ask Guo Tai the name of the two short plants with sections of their branches covered with cloth and soil.
“Huanghuali.” (黄花梨)
The name instantly perks my attention. These sections will develop roots and the branches will be sheared off for planting, he adds. I look around; there are nine other young plants in the neighbouring property. An antique chair made of “Yellow Flowering Pear” wood was recently sold in the international market for more than a million dollars, Ho Wing Meng had earlier remarked as he regaled me with a fascinating chronicle of antique deals and archaeological discoveries in China. After my first Hainan trip, I had visited him and mentioned the expensive “huali” cups and bowls for sale at the Haikou Museum shop.
Ho Wing Meng is my retired head of Philosophy Department in National University of Singapore, and the author of Straits Chinese Silver, Straits Chinese Porcelain, Straits Chinese Beadwork and Embroidery, Straits Chinese Furniture, and The Emperor’s Loss Treasure.
I immediately sprung out when he pointed to the chair I was sitting on. “That is also a Huanghuali antique chair you are sitting on, Hee How, although it has a slight defect.”
Ho Wing Meng, former head of National University of Singapore Philosophy Department
Ho Wing Meng,新加坡国立大学哲学系的前任主管
We drive south, a kilometre or so, to Huiwen. The road is wide and not heavy with traffic. Parking is not a problem. The best hotel is four-storeyed but it has no lift, which is daunting for a man of my age. The young boy at the front desk hands us the key to a room at the end of the third floor. It is spacious. It overlooks a field. I like it. But lugging my bags and luggage up and down the stairs does not appeal to me. I reluctantly decide not to stay there. The youth is not unhappy with my decision. There is that laid-back disposition. No worries. We drive to Wenchang city, where I book into the familiar Longyuan Hotel.
The familiar Longyuan Hotel
熟悉的龙源宾馆
Longlou Space Launch Centre, Qinglan Port
Chen Ru Xin quotes me a sum of 350 RMB for the destinations I have indicated over the phone on Thursday morning. His offer is reasonable and he is a reliable driver. I rush to the corner bakery to gobble down a cheese toast, a sweet bun, and a cup of soya milk before he arrives. Chen is punctual, driving us along 203 Provincial Road and through Wenjiao town, the ancestral home of famous Taiwanese actress Lin Ching Hsia’s billionaire husband Michael Ying.
Longlou town is still undergoing building development. But no workers are at the road kerb this time; they have completed transplanting the ornamental palms and trees. Travelling further on 316 Provincial Road, we reach the dusty road leading to the new Space Launch Centre. The number of houses decreases. While Chen is pessimistic about our chance of entering into the compound of the Space Centre, I reassure him that my wish is only to go as near as possible to take some photographs for souvenir, even if we are chased off by the guards. As we approach our destination, the bitumen road changes into a hard sandy road. It will be rebuilt and widened after the completion of the space centre because any prior upgrading will be futile; for the developed track will degrade under the constant heavy truck traffic, Chen explains.
Longlou Town, Wenchang
文昌龙楼镇
He stops his cab near the entrance of the Space Centre. Its surrounding boundary wall is about three metres in height, permitting passersby on the outside to see the upper levels of any tall buildings. We got out and walk towards the small sentry office. No one is in. The entrance is unguarded. The gate is open for workers. No warning sign is posted. We walk right in. Surprisingly, the site is deserted. No activity is going on.
Construction of the Space Centre, thirty kilometres east of Wenchang downtown, has begun. Before us is a huge artificial crater of about one hundred metres in diameter. In front of it is a billboard measuring about six by four metres, depicting a rocket blasting off from its launching pad against the background of a dark-blue sea and light-blue sky. I eagerly peer into the round concrete hole, knowing very well that I am among the privileged few to have stepped on this site, where satellite-loaded rockets will roar and soar in the near future. It is historic. (During my third trip, Zhang Guo Hao drives my younger brother Hee Hung and me here to re-live my amazing experience. We are delighted to observe a beautiful hoopoe searching for insects among the grass near the entrance.)
Wenchang Space Centre
中国文昌航天发射场
Conceived during the nineteen-seventies but subsequently shelved because of the vulnerability then of the southern island to foreign military attacks, the space project was ultimately approved by the Chinese State Council and the Central Military Commission in August 2007, five years after a feasibility study. During the interim, a sub-orbital rocket launch site was built here, which saw five ZhiNu sounding rockets being successfully launched between 1988 and 2006.
At the foundation-laying ceremony in September 2009 on Tonggu Peninsula, director Wang Weichang of the Hainan Space Launch Center Project Headquarters said that the site would be used for launching synchronous satellites, heavy satellites, large space stations, and deep space probe satellites. Originally scheduled for commission in 2013, the centre was completed in 2014 and ready for its first launch in 2015.
Compared to the launch centres in heavily-used Jiuquan in northwestern Gansu Province, Taiyuan in northern Shanxi, and Xichang in southwestern Sichuan, this fourth centre possesses advantages, which will enable China to compete for more international commercial launches. First, a satellite launched from Wenchang at only nineteen degrees north of the equator would use less fuel to advance from “transit” orbit into “geosynchronous” orbit, thereby extending its service life by three years, according to Chinese rocket expert Long Lehao. Alternatively, the payload mass (for example, a satellite) carried by a Changzheng-5 (Long March-5) large-thrust carrier rocket could be increased by an additional three hundred kilograms because of the 7.4 percent increase in performance.
Second, the Wenchang site is logistically superior. Near Qinglan Port, it will facilitate the transportation of new-generation Long March-5 rocket stage segments from its factory-testing facilities in Tianjin. Qinglan Port is one of the sixty-eight ports around the island, and one of its twenty-four major fishing ports. In contrast, the other three sites are deep inland in mountainous regions, which hinder transportation. The rail tracks of the inland launch centres are unsuitable for the delivery of the heavy-lift, 5-metre core CZ-5 boosters.
Finally, the Wenchang site offers safety from mishaps. Situated eight hundred metres from the coast, the launch pad will ensure rocket flights over clear sea for up to a thousand kilometres, thus minimizing the danger of burning wreckages raining upon residents. At Xichang, a Long March-3B heavy carrier rocket bearing Intelsat 708 veered off-course after launch in 1996, crashing into a nearby mountain village, destroying eighty houses, and killing more than five hundred people. In 2010, parts of the Long March-3C rocket powering lunar orbiter Chang’e-2 fortunately missed some villagers in Sichuan; in 2013, debris from the Long March-3B rocket carrying Chang’e-3 damaged two houses in Hunan Province.
China aims to land a man on the moon by 2020 and establish a space base there by 2050. To achieve its ambition, Long March-5 rockets will be tested to deliver geosynchronous communication and weather satellites, polar orbit reconnaissance satellites, deep space detection satellites, space probes, and 25-ton manned space stations. According to director Wang, the Wenchang space centre has the capacity to program a maximum of twelve launches annually. Firing off from here will also be the Long March-7 and Long March-11 rockets, currently under development. The former is the replacement of the older Long March-2F (which carried three astronauts into orbit in 2008 and 2013); the latter is a smaller, solid fuel rocket with a payload of about one ton (conveying, for example, small satellites or reconnaissance spacecraft).
Huiwen is about eighteen kilometres south of Wenchang downtown, and some forty kilometres southwest of the launch centre. However remote the danger of a spaceship mishap and falling debris on the little town is, it still exists. I fear for the welfare of my relatives in the two little nearby villages. Sichuanese will be sighing with relief: thank goodness, the Hainanese will enjoy the monthly marvels but they must also brave the perils.
One car passes us on our way out. Chen stops his cab at the nearby village store. I speak to the gentleman in his early seventies, his wife, and daughter. They have not been told of any relocation plan. Many residents of other villages have been resettled. Each resident is entitled to thirty-five square metres of new housing, he explains. With a household of nine persons, he is entitled to three hundred and fifteen square metres. In my mental calculation, he will be given an equivalent of two or three new townhouses. Being a shop owner, he is also entitled to 100,000 RMB for his parcel of land as compensation for loss of his business.
While we are talking, his wife attends to a customer, who has just arrived in his car. Besides us, he is the only person over the last fifteen or twenty minutes. With mixed emotions, I leave. I am glad, however, that the family will be receiving new homes, which will appreciate in value over the decades. But I am also sad to see them alienated from their familiar community, which was once caring and tight-knit but now dispersed.
This road is now part of Wenchang Space Centre
这条路现在是文昌航天发射场的一部分
Along our way, we stop by a row of new and beautiful townhouses in Longlou town. Walking up to the lady in her sixties standing by the open door of her home, I speak to her in Hainanese. Her family of five has moved in only two months earlier. She kindly permits me to look around her home. Inside, her daughter-in-law is cuddling her four or five-year old daughter, who spontaneously cries upon the entrance of a stranger. It is spacious and uncluttered. The usual furniture is in its context: a low coffee table in the centre and some chairs against the wall. A few toys are strewn on the floor. The townhouse has three storeys.
Living in a townhouse, I estimate the total area to be more than two thousand square feet (one hundred and eighty-six square metres). On the ground floor are a small living room, a bedroom, a storeroom, a dining room, a small kitchen, and a garden. The six-bedroom accommodation is more than sufficient for the small family. The Chinese government is very generous in its resettlement scheme, I later remark to Chen. He agrees. Will these residents regularly hear and see rockets zooming off into space in the near future?
Heading southwest along 183 Country Road to the famous Dongjiao coconut plantations, our car penetrates the shade of thousands of swaying coconut palms lining the road near Hainan Prima Resort, where we briefly stop. As far as my eyes can see, the edge near the sea shore is blooming with these generally unesteemed palms. According to the information posted on the signboard, the Dongjiao coconut grove extends up to fifteen kilometres. I gingerly feel the sand of Dongjiao beach and touch the water, the water of the South China Sea. The sands are fine, and the water is warm. Since the May Day school holiday is over, the beach is not crowded.
Dongjiao Coconut Forest Bay beach, Wenchang
文昌市东郊椰林湾海滩
Leaving the resort, Chen points to a Yuan Chang Qing Hei Dong Gua (Benincasa hispida [Oblongata group]) farm on my right. Some tiny yellow flowers are on the creepers covering the wooden frames. A dark-green oblong winter gourd (or melon) can balloon to sixty centimetres in length and forty-five centimetres in diameter. Its fresh is white in colour but its skin is thick and looks dirty. Its hollow centre holds the beige seeds. Sliced into small chunks, its slightly transparent flesh flavours stewed pork-bone soup.
Dongjiao is an old town. One road, or rather lane, is so narrow it seems to be made for two trishaws moving abreast. At the end of the main road awaits the Qinglan harbour ferry that transports buses, cars, trucks, and passengers to Qinglan town on the opposite side of the bay, eight hundred metres apart. Cars and trucks are queuing to slowly board the open-air ferry, which departs only when it is full and profitable. Passengers are patiently monitoring the inching vehicles. When all have wormed in, they follow. Their fare is 2 RMB each. The fare for taxis is 30 RMB. Its passengers are exempted. The last ferry departs at six in the evening. Fifteen minutes is all it takes, enough for me to photograph the surrounding scenes.
A year and a half later, my brother and I ride on the same ferry from Dongjiao to Qinglan town. Half a kilometre to our right, the two-way six-lane Qinglan Bridge with a length of 1.828 kilometres has just been completed and is open to traffic. Its design is identical to that of the Haikou Century Bridge. Unfortunately, the unique ferry service for motor vehicles will soon end. Perhaps the elderly lady who is lugging her basket of clams to sell at Qinglan town will have to find another means of transport.
Crossing Bamen Bay on a ferry; Qinglan Port Bridge on the right
我正渡过八门湾渡轮; 清澜港大桥在右边
Bamen Wan (八门湾; Eight-Door Bay) has clean blue waters. A few fishing boats criss-cross the bay. As I stand beside the cars and trucks on the slow-moving ferry (in 2011), my mind travels back to the late nineteenth century. I visualize Charlie Soong’s father toiling on one of the wharves, painfully recalling the sad farewells of his two young sons, especially nine-year old Jiaozhun, bound for Java.
Two white six-storey buildings in Qinglan town are situated close to the bank; they are probably offices. Behind them in the distance are two twenty-storey residential apartments. Our ferry soon reaches the town’s ferry terminus, where passengers and vehicles are waiting. A few hundred metres to our left is Qinglan Port.
Excitedly, I bolt out of the car to inspect the fishing vessels that are tied to the wharf as well as the several that are tied to one another because of docking space shortage. So here I am, standing at one of the few deep-sea fishing ports in Hainan, and witnessing huge blocks of ice sliding down a transparent plastic tube from a truck into the hull of a large trawler. Wearing only shorts, some of the nine physically fit men ranging from about twenty-five to thirty-five years of age are assisting the loading. They are preparing for a prolonged trip and a bounty perhaps from the Xisha (Paracel) islands, about three hundred kilometres to their south. They will reach their fishing ground in ten hours if they cruise at a speed of thirty kilometres an hour (or 15.6 knots). When the fishing season is over, their boat and boats of numerous others will return and anchor in this harbour.
Qinglan Port, full of deep-sea fishing trawlers
海南省文昌市清澜港有许多深海捕鱼拖网渔船
Surrounded by deep sea and ocean, Hainan Island is endowed with a rich fishing ground. The many fishing ports dotting its shore provide bounteous fresh seafood to its citizens. What a lucky island, I mumble to myself. Driving back to Wenchang, Chen kindly stops at Coconut Grand View Garden. This is a coconut park, he says. The admission for seniors is 10 RMB. Two groups of six or seven-year old students, some in yellow shorts and others in yellow track pants, but all in T-shirts with stripes horizontal stripes of yellow, white, and grey are escorted by three teachers. They are on their way out and home. They have finished their excursion and picnic by the lake.
At the playground, some park employees are clearing the empty drinks bottles and food packages from the tables and ground. Besides coconut trees, which are abundant, other plants and trees are widely distributed throughout the park. Crescentia cujete L., Eugenia javanica Lam, Excoecaria cochinchinensis Lour, Ficus microcarpa var. pusillifolia, Manilkara sapota L., Veitchia merrilli (Becc.) H.E. Moore, and Wodyetia bifurcata A.K. Irvine are some of the species represented. These plants are thriving, thanks to the astounding care and diligence of those looking after the trees and those looking after the ground. Although it is not a very big park, I decide to return to the hotel, satisfied with the day.
Wenchang Coconut Grand View Gardens
海南省文昌市椰子大观园
Copyright 2015
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Rambling around my ancestral Hainan