Rambling around my ancestral Hainan

Vainly attempting to climb Wuzhishan (五指山)

 

A grave mistake for anyone aspiring to conquer Wuzhishan is not reaching its base very early in the morning.  By “very early”, I mean six or seven.  The latest would be about nine or ten.  That is, of course, my folly, which I do not realise until later in the day.  I arise only at eight on Sunday morning.    

I also take my leisurely time to admire and photograph the many House Swifts (小白腰雨燕) - subsequently identified for me by Professor Liang Wei - gliding around the five-storey government building located about fifty metres from my hotel entrance.  This huge flock of birds has made their nests under the eaves.  They are small birds, approximately the length of fifteen centimetres.  Black in colour, they have white throats, feeding on flying insects, which include bees and beetles.

House Swifts are common resident in Southeast Asia.  But during the last decade, they have been observed in northern Australia.  They are a species of swift belonging to the Apodidae family.  The other species include the Dark-rumped Swift, Fork-tailed Swift, Cave Swiftlet, Moluccan Swiftlet, Mottled Spinetail, and Black Spinetail.  Because they are high fliers, which rarely feed on the ground, it is not easy to see them in close range and appreciate their colours and features.  As always, I am satisfied just to watch them in graceful motion, randomly criss-crossing the blue sky with their stretched crescent wings while capturing their luckless prey.  It is nine forty-five.  I realize I am running late.  

“When will my clothing be ready for collection?”   I anxiously enquire.  

“Tomorrow evening,” the nearby dry cleaner lady replies.

A motorcyclist approaches.  He quotes 3 RMB for the short ride to the bus terminal.  I gladly hop onto it.  Thinking that some food stalls will be at my destination, I skip my breakfast. 

The eighteen-seater bus to Shuimanxiang (水满乡; literally: Water-full Township) carries seven passengers, including me and a young girl of about four years of age.  The fare is only 10 RMB (about S$2).  The conductress is a pretty lady in her mid-twenties.  She is fashionable, wearing a yellow sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of low-cut jeans that is in danger of slipping off.  

Although Shuimanxiang is twenty kilometres northeast of Wuzhishan town, the undulating terrain does not permit a direct bus route.  As a result, the bus will have to make a twenty-kilometre detour north along 224 National Road to Maoyang town (毛阳镇) and then a twenty-five or thirty kilometre trip southeast.  In short, it will take me two hours to reach my destination, dashing any hope of ever climbing to the Wuzhishan peak.  I am prepared to scale even a quarter of the way, perhaps four or five hundred metres high.

After a kilometre from downtown station, the bus ascends a mountain slope.  Because of the light rain, it penetrates a very thin shower of mist.  The air is cool and fresh, and I immediately feel rejuvenated.  The scenery is soothing and breathtaking too.  The white fog obscuring the opposite peak, the dense green trees in the distance, the flowering shrubs thriving on the escarpments, the thick grass on the ground, and the few local houses – these are scenes leaping out of a classical Chinese painting.  The residents here are blessed.  Their environment is pristine.  Although they may be poor, they do not live in want.  We fly past banana plants, mango and jackfruit trees, and other fruit trees, which unfortunately bear no fruits at this time of the year for me to identify.  Lucky people, I say casually to myself.    

At the petrol station in Maoyang, the driver injects four plastic jerry cans with petrol at the cost of 180 RMB for 21.15 litres, 250 RMB for 29.38 litres (two cans), and 268.06 RMB for 31.5 litres.  Each of these will be delivered to different clients along the route for use, presumably, in their vehicles.  Conveying these petrol cans in the luggage compartment of the bus is, of course, a dangerous practice.  But buses here perform a social service such as buying and ferrying cargoes such as fruits, fertilizers, and petrol to the locals residing in outlying villages.  At the same station, each of the two motorcyclists fills his bike with 1.17 litres costing 10 RMB, which should enable him to travel around twenty kilometres.  Given the low monthly wages of employees, the price of 8.5 RMB per litre is very expensive.

By the time it leaves Maoyang at eleven, the bus is carrying fifteen passengers, some with gunny sacks bulging with perhaps fruits or goods.  Again, a kilometre later, it struggles up the meandering road.  The visible slope is on my left; it is alive with flowering plants.  The valley is on my right.  Cicadas are chirping their deafening calls.  An occasional song burst forth from an unseen bird.  Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of some flashing pond or river.

My mind drifts back to the reminiscence of famous botanist Benjamin Couch Henry (1850-1901), to visions of frequent rainfalls in this mountainous heart and blood-sucking leeches that latched relentlessly onto his skin during his exploration of Hainan in the eighteen-eighties.  He mentioned also the splendours of the heavily forested mountain sides, the “many fine ravines and wild gorges”, abundant cat-tails with yellow flowers, the great variety of ferns, and the lush bamboos.  Here I am, looking at a ravine, sharing his immense joys.

While some passengers alight at the small villages along the way, some board.  I study their faces and their skins.  Are these the Li or Miao people?  They look like me; they dress like me.  I stare at them, straining again to see the distinguishing indigenous features, if any, of the Li.  I find none. 

According to Henry, the Li villagers practised the slash-and-burn agricultural method as well as gathered animal hides, deer horns, fragrant woods, mushrooms, and rattan, which they traded with the local Chinese.  The environmentally destructive slash-and-burn technique has been officially discouraged because soil erosion had resulted in land degradation and extinction of many species of plants in the past.  I see no evidence of the practice on this journey. 

Hainan has about four thousand and two hundred plant species, of which forty-five are treated as endangered.  Two thousand species have medicinal value.  These trees have an average height of about thirty metres.  

At Shuimanxiang, I commit another uncharacteristic blunder.  When I step down from the bus, perhaps in a daze, one of the trishaw drivers mentions a name in Mandarin.  Without understanding him, I simply assume that he is referring to Wuzhishan foothill; such is my eagerness to climb the famous peak.  I should have explained my intention; instead, I ask the cost.  It is 5 RMB, which is reasonable.

This hasty decision lands me at the “Tropic Rain Forest Scenery Spot Of Five Finger Mountain” (五指山热带雨林风景区; Wuzhishan Redai Yulin Fengjing Qu).  That is the English sign on a prominent retaining wall.  It is located two kilometres south of Shuimanxiang.  My next mistake is to delay the rectification of my earlier error.  I should have requested him to take me to the foothill, which is four kilometres north of Shuimanxiang; instead, I decide to look at the tourist attraction and also have my lunch before embarking on my heroic mission.  

Below me several Chinese tourists are jumping into their inflated rafts for the river ride of their life.  I count at least twelve rafts, each with two paddlers.  Everyone is wearing an orange lifejacket and a helmet of a different colour.  Moving off when ready, they will take eighty minutes to navigate a course of approximately six kilometres down this tributary of Changhua River (昌化江).  Fortunately for them, the weather is sunny. 

This starting point is some ten kilometres from the Wuzhishan peak.  The central mountainous region of Wuzhishan City and adjoining Qiongzhong County is the cradle of three longest rivers in Hainan: Nandu, Changhua, and Wanquan.  Besides these, about one hundred and fifty other rivers radiate from the central highlands.  Except for some short stretches, all of these rivers are not navigable because of rapids along the course.  For the daring, an adventure in Wuzhishan Grand Canyon rafting is a test.  

A few persons are sitting around a table at a stall.  I ask the owner.  Yes, she will fry a plate of local vegetable with pork pieces.  From the array of fresh vegetables on the table, I pick a vegetable that I have not seen before.  It consists of a stalk with leaves and many tendrils, which I later learn from Cai Hong is pumpkin leaves (南瓜叶子).  Fried with garlic, the pork pieces are thinly sliced and evenly cooked, and the vegetable is crunchy.  The dish is delicious.  Including a bowl of rice, my sumptuous lunch costs 25 RMB, which I regard as fair.

Three trishaws are parked by the side of the road but their drivers have gone for lunch.  They are nowhere to be seen.  I am stranded at one in the afternoon.  I am frantic.  Three Chinese ladies are also waiting impatiently for them.  Twenty minutes later, I am getting more desperate.  I see a motorcyclist dropping off his pillion-seat passenger.  I swiftly hail him.  I explain my purpose, and happily agreed on a fare of 30 RMB. 

He takes me to his single-storey house, which functions as a provision shop in this small village-town.  He fills up his motorcycle with petrol from a jerry can.  Although relatively clean, the short street in front of his door is barely large enough for two cars to squeeze through.  At one end of this street is another equally narrow street.  I count only nine people, five being kids.  One - a toddler - is standing in the middle of the street.  

Only forty-eight years old, Ma Wen Xiu has three sons aged twenty-six, twenty-four, and twenty-one.  My mental calculation tells me that he married at the age of twenty.  He looks like a typical local of the inland: tanned from the harsh sunlight and dressed without any care of the world.  He sports a pair of sandals, a black boxer short with white rim, and a light-yellow T-shirt beneath his unbuttoned long-sleeved beige shirt.  His head is balding.  He looks like a decent man; so I feel safe with him.  

Leaving the main winding road, we turn left into a track, which is a hundred metres from the mountain trail to the peak of Wuzhishan.  Four wooden huts with attap roofs stand in the midst of tall trees on one side of the track.  One of them is the ticket office, Ma tells me on our way out when I later ask him.  Near these huts is a pile of huge irregularly-shaped rocks, presumably from the mountain for ornamental purpose.

On the other side of the track are the government forestry office, a new building under construction, a wooden house with its roof undergoing renovation, a small brick house, and two other wooden houses.  The new three-storey building, enclosed within bamboo scaffoldings, is half completed because the external walls have not been built.  On completion, it will be the outstanding building along this track.  I see only two other persons around the area. 

Ma accompanies me to the trail on the hillside.  It seems deserted, and my fear emerges.  Will I be robbed and murdered by bandits in that secluded place?  I quickly offer him 50 RMB to act as my guide me for an hour.  Although narrow, the path is constructed with cement, which partially explains the 60 RMB admission fee.  I have not been charged because I have been accompanied by him, a local, Ma tells me.  As we walk along the trail, I soon pass a trail which branches upwards.

“Where does this lead to?”  

“To the peak of Wuzhishan”, he replies.  

Excitedly I ask, “Can you take me up there?”  

“No.  It takes four hours to climb up to the top.”

“I don’t want to go to the very top.  Just some distance.”

“But it is about to rain.  And it is very slippery.”

Kaput.  My aspiration of climbing halfway up the Wuzhishan peak has been crushed.  My ego is deflated.  And I am downcast.  I am sure he does not want to be responsible for my death.  To young Hainanese in Hainan, I am an old man, a “Da Shu” (大叔; literally, Big Uncle).  In buses, I need to seat down because I might tumble and hurt myself should the bus jerk suddenly: they ruminate, as they offer me their seat.

Ma indicates ahead, the gradual elevation.  Thus, along the gentle and easy trail, this old man carefully trots, perhaps to Ma’s great relief.  He is right.  It takes four hours to pull oneself to the summit and another three or four hours to descend.  That is the average time for a physically fit person.  And early morning is the best time to begin one’s ascent.

I console myself.  This gentle gradient is still the slope of Wuzhishan, the highest mountain in Hainan Island.  I am still climbing up Wuzhishan, although not to its glorious apex.  Ma tells me that he has escorted adventurers up.  His fee is 200 RMB for the day.  As I look upward towards my right, he points out an unusually long and thick hanging root that twists and coils.  The trees are tall, blocking any hope of seeing the peak of Wuzhishan from here.  Yet they are not dense enough to deflect penetrating sunlight.  This forest is not dark and gloomy.  The trail is comfortably wide enough for one climber, who should have no fear of sliding off the side and into the valley below.  

It sets no record: I am only one hundred or two hundred metres above sea level.  Serving as steps, flat stone boulders have been considerately laid at regular intervals on slightly steeper slopes for visitors’ safety.  Along an even steeper section, a concrete railing has been erected.  The shallow ravine is on my left.  The river is almost dry.  I walk under a huge rock that could possibly collapse if shaken vigorously during an earth tremor.  Nearby are a shrine and a white stone statue of a god (圣人; sheng ren).  So overwhelming and reverential is my indescribable experience of Wuzhishan I even forget to ask Ma the name of this mountain divine.

Made of sliced tree trunks, signs with names carved and painted in red are posted by the sides of unique trees along the route.  Native to Hainan and Vietnam, Endospermum chinense Benth, belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family, may attain a height of thirty-five metres.  Its light hardwood timber is used for making boxes, disposable chopsticks, match splints, and plywood.  Homalium hainanense Gagnep (红花天料木, commonly known as “Mu-Sheng Shu” 母生树in Mandarin) is rare and can shoot up to forty metres.  Its trunk offers quality timber.  Aglaia dasyclada How et. T. Chen belongs to the Mahogany family.  Having edible fruits, Choerospondias axillaris Roxb./Burtt et Hill may reach up to twenty metres while Helicia hainanensis Hayata (海南山龙眼; Hainan Mountain Longan) may reach eighteen metres.  Sphaeropteris brunoniana (Hook) is a tree fern.  The one in front of me is two metres tall.  But they can grow up to ten metres high.  One tree fern, which is over sixteen metres in height, has been recorded in Hainan.  I have not seen a Hopea hainanensis, which is an endangered hardwood species indigenous to Hainan and Vietnam.

About six hundred species of trees are unique to Hainan Island, and about four hundred and fifty are logged.  Their tree trunks are so hard that they are impervious to borers.  Because they do not readily rot, they are used for building purposes.  Indeed, a huge quantity of good wood was used in the construction of Beijing Great Hall of the People and Palace Museum.  Some species have medicinal properties, which can be extracted to treat diseases like cancer, haemorrhage, leukaemia psoriasis, and rheumatism.  An interesting tree species with potential commercial use is the diesel-oil tree.  A single tree can yield between ten and twenty-five kilograms of oil, which has similar combustibility as diesel oil.  

Of course, some plants like Upas Tree (known in Mandarin as the “Jiandu Mu” or “Arrow Poison Tree”) have poisonous sap, which the Li people smear onto their arrow tips to kill their prey, whether beasts or enemies.  One should be extremely careful not to accidentally bite a Haimangguo, the fruit of the Cerbera odollam tree.  It is deadly.  For obvious reason, this coastal or marshland plant is commonly known as “Suicide Tree”, indirectly responsible for many deaths.  In Singapore, it is known as “pong pong” because of the sound from the mango-shaped falling fruits.

Meeting Ma is a win-win event.  Thanks to him, I get to climb part of Wuzhishan while, thanks to me, he earns one or two days’ worth of wages.  After kindly stopping along the way to take a photograph of me posing against the background of Wuzhishan, he drops me off at the bus stand at three in the afternoon for the fare of 20 RMB.

Lingering there at the single-lane track, I gradually absorb a lasting inspiration from the lofty distant mountain, in deep awe of the magnificent landmark and great envy of bold visitors who have triumphantly kissed its sacred peak.

Clouds constantly drift from right to left, veiling its crown.  Unscarred by any brown patch of land-clearing or burning, its slope is decked with green trees.  Only the unruly row of houses about three hundred metres in front of me obstructs my view of its foothill.  Similarly, seven separate clumps of bamboo at the park across the track are partly responsible too.  Tall Areca-nut palms dot the fringes of the park.  When the clouds fade away, a perpendicularly eroded section of the peak becomes visible.  A flock of geese waddles across the track to drink from the puddle in the park.  I see three dogs; I am surprised that they have not been eaten.  

On my part of the track are two rows of two-storey houses, totalling about nine houses.  Two of these have demountable stalls in front, their owners thoughtfully providing customers with tables and chairs to sit.  One of the two stalls, which also sell drinks, is doing a better business because it is better located.  Behind is a small market selling firewood, vegetables, and pork.  I wait one hour and a half for the bus.  Others are waiting there before me.  Four schoolgirls are in uniform, and a boy of about fourteen is talking to them.  Four other girls are not in uniform and a girl of about eight or nine has a backpack.  Two trishaws are waiting for fare. 

Three baby barn swallows (家燕) are cloistered in their cosy semi-conical nest constructed under the ledge of the floor above the grocery shop.  Their home is only three metres above the ground, snugged at a corner, the intersection of three walls: the front wall of the shop, the ledge, and the solid reinforcement beam supporting the first floor.  If I have a short ladder, I could easily pat them.  But their parents are keeping vigil, cleverly balancing on the electricity cord just inches below.  They are unafraid of people.  The parents have a black breastband separating their dark chestnut faces and throats from the white underparts.

A close inspection reveals their painstaking effort in nest construction.  Each constituent piece of hardened mud pallet is about the size of my thumb’s digit.  It is apparent that the couple began with the formation of the bottom layer, the foundation.  Further additions, with dried grass as reinforcement, lead to the formation of the inverse bell-shaped home, which should protect their young from the harsh sunlight and cold wind.  They are fortunate; the farms and grassland around provide sufficient breeding ground for insects, which are their food.  Barn swallows are a species of swallows in the Hirundinidae family.

By the time it turns up at four-thirty, the bus is almost full, with most being school children around fourteen years of age.  I struggle to balance myself in the moving can of packed human sardines.  I am, however, fortunate; I manage to get a ride.  The bus does not even stop for passengers waiting patiently along the route.  Their frantic waving is futile.  Their faces tell of deep disappointment.  They are doomed to wait another hour or two for the next bus - if it is not packed like ours.

When we finally reach town at five-forty in the evening, my thoughts rush back to those young locals still stranded.  If they are lucky, they might reach town by seven or eight at night.

At the same café, more male patrons are having their dinner.  I soon understand why.  A beautiful young lady is helping in the service.  She is in her mid-twenties.  Smartly-outfitted and wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes, she is always smiling.  Judging from the other assistants’ addresses, I surmise she is the proprietress’ daughter.  I too join the crowd, startled by Miss Wuzhishan’s beauty and grace as she glides from table to table.

 

Copyright 2015

Photos

 

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