Summertime in Sanya: Rainforests & Romance

(To read Part I of this trip, click here!)

The nice thing about staying at a resort with a private beach (silly, silly, silly – what is this life?!) is being able to pop down for some sun and a swim truly whenever you want. Just finished breakfast? Go for a morning swim. Everyone else taking a midday nap? Bring a book down and read under the palm trees. Have an hour to spare before leaving for dinner? Sounds like a great time to look for jellyfish. (Or, rather, a great time for the jellyfish to look for you. They found me. They did. Oh well, I’ve had worse.)

Admittedly, one of my hands-down all-time favorite Sanya beach activities was… hunting for wedding photoshoots! Because this was a private beach, and thus much cleaner and less swarming with tourists, there was a photography company that would bring its customers to the beach for their pre-wedding photoshoots. (Side note: pre-wedding photoshoots are HUGE in China. Like, ALL of the extravagant outfits, ALL of the rose petals, ALL of the sunsets, ALL of the poses… Look it up. It’s a thing. I love it.) In the span of an hour, as I would sit there reading my book, I would see up to 20 couples coming down for their photoshoot. Looking along the beachfront, sometimes there would be 6 different couples taking their photos at different angles. (I was once asked to get out of the water so I wouldn’t be in the shot. Woops.) My favorite would be when they’d bring props: for one of the shoots, the photographers came down to set up all of these fake flowers, big plastic daisy-looking things, around a bench they brought down. They spent probably 25 minutes setting it up. The couple arrived, they spent maybe 3 minutes getting the shot, then left; the photographers immediately removed all of the fake flowers and were gone. It’s just the greatest.

As much fun as photobombing couples on the beach was, while down in Hainan I wanted to do some exploring inland as well – if there’s a rainforest nearby, I’m going to want to see it. My friend and I called a taxi and began the 35 km journey to the Yanoda Rainforest Cultural Tourism Zone.

呀诺达 Yanoda – which, in the local dialect, means “one, two, three” – is a rainforest park dedicated to perpetuating the native culture and preserving the natural ecosystem. The park encompasses 45 square kilometers in the midst of an ecological protection area of 123 square kilometers – embodying all 5 famous rainforests in the Hainan province. In classic China fashion, to attract tourism they have turned the rainforest into something of a “rainforest theme park” — in addition to long paths through the natural environment, there are swings, ropes courses, zip lines, animal attractions, and plenty of selfie spots. (I’m a bit torn on this trend. While I would much rather walk through a natural rainforest without any gimmicks or thrill rides, I recognize that in making it a tourist park, they are able to raise money to protect it and enforce restrictions on its safety.)

Before I share our adventures in the park, a quick tangent on our ride to get there. On the way over to the park, our taxi driver (through the use of many translation apps on both of our ends) asked us if we had our passports with us to get tickets. We responded that we didn’t, but that we didn’t see anything online about needing them to get in to the park. After we were about 20 minutes away from our hotel, and realizing that we might be driving a few hours to get to the park only to learn we may be turned away, we told the driver that we thought we should turn around and go back to the hotel to grab our passports. The driver pulled over to the side of the road, called the park, explained the situation and asked if passports would be necessary. After a few minutes of talking with them, he let us know that we would be okay without passports — saving us the 45 minutes it would have taken for us to drive back to the hotel, grab our passports, and set out again.

When we arrived at the front gate to the park, our driver offered to help us buy our tickets — again, with everything in Mandarin and us being the only two English-speakers in sight, this was a tremendous help. We looked at the price points and let him know which activities we were interested in, and he spoke with the park workers to purchase them for us. As we were about to head in, he told us that we might have a hard time trying to find a cab back as there are not many taxis regularly in this part of the island. According to the meter, our ride to get here here cost about 150 kuài — he said, rather than pay him now, he would be happy to wait for us to be done, drive us back home, and call it 250 for the whole day which we could pay at the end. Sure, if you want to be cynical, here was a man making a business plan, and yet: without his help, this whole process would have been a whole lot more difficult. We didn’t have a way to ask about the passports. We didn’t have a plan on how to get back to the hotel, or even consider that it may be difficult to get a cab out here. For all he knew, we would go into the park, not pay him for the ride, and find another taxi home afterwards. But instead, he parked his cab, sat around for a few hours, and drove us home at the end of the day for the discounted price we agreed on earlier. All without us ever being able to speak a word in each other’s languages. Though many times it can feel isolating living in a country where so much is so different from home, these little moments of human connection remind me just how alike we all are.

Walking through the park, I was so glad that we’d taken a day off from the beach for this. Though it was incredibly hot and humid even in the shade of the giant banyan trees towering above us (check out all of my little baby curls popping out!), being surrounded with so much nature and fresh air made it absolutely worth it.

Though the tourism draws were fun as well – I’ll always enjoy climbing up into a swing that stretches out over a big drop – one of my favorite parts of the day was seeing all of the BIRDS! For those who may not know this about me, I just love birds. All kinds of birds. They are like tiny angry little rainbow dinosaurs and I think they are wonderful. So when we found a giant aviary filled with tropical birds, you KNOW I bought some bird seed and pretended to be a Disney princess feeding the braver little guys right out of my hand. Best. Day. Ever.

We spent a few hours wandering around, getting lost, getting excited about little birds and big trees, and occasionally climbing up on top of any big rocks I could find. One of the funniest things to me is all of the random statues you can find in these tourism zones. Throughout my travels I’ve found dinosaurs, Snow White and the seven dwarfs, little woodland creatures, Spongebob… I don’t entirely understand, but I am here for it.

We stopped for lunch at the “food court” area of the park. A perk of traveling somewhere tropical is all of the delicious fruit! Dragon fruit is a personal favorite of mine, so given any opportunity to enjoy some fresh pitaya, I will take it. (I was absolutely delighted to find out how they grow….but that will come on a much later blog…)

Another tourist attraction I wanted to visit while in Sanya was the Sanya Romance Park. Remember the love story between the hunter and the fairy deer lady from Luhuitou Park in my last blog? Yeah, they decided to take that story and RUN with it…

Sanya Romance Park is another “theme park” tourist attraction that highlights Sanya’s local Li and Miao minority cultures. Or at least, in theory. You’re not going to find any authentic folk culture here, BUT you are able to see some of the traditional architecture, clothing, music, and dance in what feels like the Epcot version of the Li and Miao cultures. Better than nothing, I suppose. I’m a sucker for a street show and a lot of color.

Walking through the park, it’s hard to know what to look at. Everywhere you look there is an abundance of color — lanterns strung up above the walkway, banners hanging off each artisan’s shop to attract your attention, random elephant statues peering down at you, neon signs flashing, actors walking around in the traditional costumes for photo opportunities…

My favorite observation, however, was unspoken dress code for all of the women who were visiting the park. (Or, honestly, maybe it was a spoken dress code. It was WAY too prevalent to be a coincidence.) Apparently, somewhere in the Visiting Sanya Romance Park rulebook that everyone else seemed to receive before their visit was the requirement that if you are a woman between the ages of 20-80, you must show up in a long floral maxi dress and a GIANT hat. This is non-negotiable. Even better, you and the other 15 women in your group can color coordinate your dresses/hats. And finally, the best option, you and your 2 other friends can show up wearing the exact same dress and hat and walk around looking like a set of triplets dressed for their first Easter brunch. It was remarkable. I wish I’d worn a hat.

One of the main reasons to visit Sanya Romance park is the high tech Cirque du Soleil-adjacent show they perform each day: Sanya Legend. This hour-long production features acrobatics and dance as they showcase local Li and Miao legends and myths. (You guessed it, our hunter & deer fairy story gets the main feature – romantic aerial silk duet and all.) Even though none of the narration was in English, I was so enchanted with the amazing performances that I didn’t mind if I couldn’t entirely follow the storylines. When we first walked in, I was surprised to see a rather blank, open, all-black stage – I expected something more extravagant. However, as soon as the show began, so did the magical stage effects — rain onstage, flying actors out over the audience, fight choreography coming in from all directions, a giant ship over storm-tossed waters as trapeze artists performed above, and even ending with a giant transparent tarp suspended over the audience covered in water with mermaids and swimmers performing above us. In typical Madison-fashion, I did tear up once or twice. I LOVE circus performances, what can I say?!

After the show, as we were getting ready to leave, there was another theme park street performance. While I recognize that these are corny and not entirely authentic, as someone who knows very little about the minority cultures (hadn’t even heard of them before doing my pre-trip research like the very cool person I am) I always think it’s fun to see even a hyper commercialized version of their music, costumes, and dances. Plus, I’ve known enough theme park performers in my time, I feel it’s only fair to stop and give them some positive energy. They’ve had to do this same dance for gawking tourists a bazillion times, the least I can do is engage and enjoy it! (Plus, look at the beautiful costumes!!)

With my time in Sanya coming to an end, I spent one last morning on the beach, made one last visit to the swanky outdoor resort bar, and bade farewell to the Hawaii of China. Just enough time to rest up for a few days before heading off on my next adventure…