Hainan Island @ China (5) – Sanya Yanoda Park
Short story first: I often have interesting conversations with uber and lyft drivers. Last week, there is one like this: Me: “hey, this guy horned you for nothing?” Driver: “oh, I don’t take those stuffs personally.” hmm, from a statistical point of view, we probably would all agree that the error rate of our life is none-zero, then meeting defect(s) is just a part of a normal process ha 🙂
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Sanya has this hilarious rain forest park you have to visit. It has this strange name called Yanoda (呀诺达), meaning 1, 2, 3 in the local dialect. The company who runs the park also gives it more meanings, but even Chinese don’t quite understand them 🙂 I heard from our tour guide that this company is selected by the Chinese government as one of the role models, for it runs in a military style. All employees get up 5am and do military training. Every o’clock, the employees, at no matter which posts they serve, sings and dances to the music broadcasts in the park … lol . The park is quite far from the city center. So it is a good idea to book a tour with a tourist company. Then the bus transports you door to door, and you pay much less than go by yourself.
Probably attributing to the military style, everything here runs very seriously. For example, every tourist only can move around following a park guide unless he/she is told “free time from x to y at z zone”. Every such group has a name. Our guide talks to us like this “okay, Penguins, now let’s take a bath room break” lol
The first activity I went is called “stepping on a waterfall and playing the water” (踏瀑戏水）. It is a 10-stop obstacle course, where you climb up a creek to reach a water fall. Everybody is given a helmet and a pair of grass shoes. The first difficult point is like this:
You are supposed to hold the rope and swing across the creek. Only one people in our group reaches the other side without getting wet. The water is so cold but just reaches the chest though. The guide said there were girls who cried for “save me please” in the past as if she was drowning.
The next stop is to pass the creek (it is about 10 meters wide and it is deeper than a person in the middle) by walking on top of the chained tires. People follow one by one across the creek. The tire chain moves so much when the water gets deeper in the middle and where there were bunch of people crossing. So I was concentrating to balance. Then the girl behind me was cheering me up so loudly “Hey, DON’T WORRY, YOU CAN DO IT !” 😀 When I arrived at the other side and looked back, I saw the girl behind me was still standing at the start point and hesitating whether she should step out her left foot or her right foot. There was a long line of people backed up behind her 😀 “Thank you, the cute girl”
The most exciting stop is the last one where we climb up the waterfall. There is some chain installed on the rocks. But the rocks are still slippery, and it is super cool that the flying water just keep running into your face, head and body …
After climbing up the water fall, I headed up to the zip line. The zip line is setup between two mountain tops with very beautiful views. You feel like a flying bird freely soar on top of the tree tops. Unfortunately, the flying is too short and you quickly become a penguin after a few minutes, as the guide is waiting for you 🙂 The funny thing is that the park is bragging how safe the zip line is. Everybody at the start point is comforting each other that how even 2 years old or 100 years old can do it 🙂
There is also an activity where you can ride a swing on the cliff. I guess it feels like you are about jumping off the cliffs when you swing out 😀 But I run too short of time to do it in order to catch up our tourist group 🙂
Hainan people are very proud for this precious plant called Fragment rosewood (黄花梨 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalbergia_odorifera). It looks like this when it is only a few years old. It grows very slow, but when it is mature, it can be sold at 1000$/kg on the market. When passing these trees, the park guide is very excited and asks if any tourist wants to “adopt” a tree. To adopt a tree, each person pays 100RMB a year, there will be a label hung from a tree with your name on it. After you go home, you can email park employees to send you the live picture and video of the tree. Fragment rosewood represents good fortune for your career in the Chinese culture. So many people adopts this type of tree. Since multiple persons can adopt the same tree, the park can never run out of the trees :D. One of the girls in my group adopts a tree that brings good luck for her love life. I wish she already found her lover by now 😀
