FREE AND EASY TRAVEL TO CHINA - Sanya, Haikou, Jiangmen, Kaiping & Shunde

The Guanyin Statue of Hainan, also known as Guan Yin of the South Sea of Sanya - a 108 metre tall statue of the bodhisattva Guan Yin, sited on the south coast of China's island province of Hainan in the Nanshan Culture Tourism Zone near the Nanshan Temple west of Sanya. The statue has three faces; one side faces inland and the other two sides faced the South China Sea, to represent blessing and protection by Guan Yin of China and the whole world. One aspect depicts Guan Yin cradling a sutra in the left hand and gesturing the Vitarka Mudra with the right, the second with her palms crossed, holding a string of prayer beads, and the third holding a lotus. The mantra Om mani padme hum was written in Tibetan script around each aspects' halo. This is currently the third tallest statue in the world.

The statue took six years to build and was enshrined on 24 April 2005, with the participation of 108 eminent monks from various Buddhist groups in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Mainland China, and tens of thousands of pilgrims. The delegation also included monks from the Theravada and Vajrayana traditions.

Situated 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Sanya City, Hainan Province, the Nanshan (South Mountain) Temple ranks as one of the main attractions in the Nanshan Culture Tourism Zone. Occupying an area of 400 mu (66 acres), it is the biggest Buddhist preaching site established since the founding of the People's Republic of China.Nestling at the foot of Nanshan (South Mountain) Mountain (an auspicious region famous for Chinese Buddhist culture with emphasis on longevity-happiness), the temple was completed on 12 April, 1998, the 2,000th anniversary year of Buddhism coming to China.

With its total floor space of 40,000 sq meters (10 acres), Nanshan Temple boasts several replicas of Tang Dynasty (618-907) architecture. The Renwang Gate (Mountain Gate), the entrance to the temple, has two figures of Buddha standing there as guards. As well, seven Buddhist figures are enshrined in the Doushuai Adytum (or Hall). The Maitreya Buddha (Sanskrit, Mile in Chinese) is in the middle of the Hall with two Bodhisattvas on each side.

Around these three Buddhist images stand the Four Heavenly Kings, who act as Buddhist guardians with duties to protect all living creatures and to bring favorable weather and ample harvest. From the Doushuai Adytum, a porch brings visitors to Jin Tang, also called in the time of the Tang Dynasty, Daxiongbaodian (Hall of Ceremony). Here are enshrined the three main Buddha images: the Sakyamuni, the Bhaisajyaguru (Chinese Yaoshiwang) and the Amitabha (Chinese Amituo). These two halls comprise the main parts of the Temple.

In addition, there are some other enchanting sights in Nanshan Temple:
The Golden Jade Kwan-yin StatueThis amazing national treasure is a 3.8-meter（13-feet) high Golden Jade Kwan-yin Statue. It is covered with 100 kg (221 pounds) of gold and silver, embedded with 120 carats of South African diamonds plus countless jewels, and containing two sacred Buddhist relics. Sea Watch TerraceJust in front of the Nanshan Temple is a terrace directly facing the South China Sea, from which visitors can admire the vast seascape and meanwhile view the spectacular 108-meter (354-feet) high copper statue of the South China Sea Kwan-yin Bodhisattva.

Nanshan Temple is a comparatively new temple which combines Buddhist culture, garden architectures, and recreational facilities with the spirit of peace, tranquility, happiness and harmony. And it must be a wise choice for visitors who wish to pay their respects to Buddhist culture while traveling in Sanya.

Photograph of myself taken at the main entrance, The Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone, Sanya, Hainan Island.

Nanshan is a significant place in China’s history of Buddhism. It is said that Jian Zhen, a famous Tang-dynasty Buddhist monk, made five unsuccessful voyages to Japan to promote Buddhism. It was on the sixth time that he drifted to Nanshan. One and a half years later, he finally got to Japan. Inside the Nanshan Buddhist Culture Garden was the Nanshan Buddhist Temple, the biggest one built since the founding of the new China in 1949. The Big Heavenly Adobe and the Small Heavenly Adobe are important parts of the Nanshan Cultural Garden. Featuring green forests, fancy rocks and mysterious caves, the garden is an attractive place for both Taoist & Buddhism believers and tourists from home and abroad. Nanshan, with its uniqueness and beauty, is now a tourist destination attracting more and more tourists. People can not only enjoy themselves in the great ecological environment with sun, sand, sea, but can also ,deep within the heart, the real beauty, peace, and harmony of Buddhist culture.

Nanshan Temple is a comparatively new temple which combines Buddhist culture, garden architectures, and recreational facilities with the spirit of peace, tranquility, happiness and harmony. And it must be a wise choice for visitors who wish to pay their respects to Buddhist culture while traveling in Sanya.

The vegetarian food in Nanshan Temple is very famous, including many nutritious dishes made of wild fungus, konjak, and bean products.

Photograph taken from Nanshan Buddhist Temple showing two of the 3-sided faces of Guan Yin Statue.

Photograph of myself taken at one of the scenic spots within Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone

Travelling from Sanya City to the Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone was a breeze. From our budget hotel, Hunfeng Hotel, we just walked across the road and took a mini bus which headed right up to the main entrance. The fare was reasonable at RMB 10 each way but the entrance fee was a staggering RMB 150/person but it is worth it (if you have been there). The journey took slightly less than 1 hour. The weather was cooling when we were there on 19 January 2007. The three of us, my elder brother (Heng Wah), my elder sister (Lai Meng) & myself (Heng Kei) spend almost 4 hours within the Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone and we did not even sweat or feel exhausted.

Sanya City is located at the southernmost tip of Hainan Island and to the east of Vietnam. Sanya City is the second largest city on Hainan Island covering an area of 1.919 sq. m with a population of 481,200 and having 19 bays and over 40 islets lying along a 209 kilometers coast line.Hainan is often called the “the Hawaii of the East". It has 3 famous beaches, i.e. Dandonghai Bay, Yalong Bay & Sanya Bay.

We took a bus to the nearby Sanya Dandonghai Beach @ RMB 1 per person. The beach was so beautiful that MISS WORLD, the world most watched annual premiere beauty pageant was held at Sanya for 4 years, i.e. 2003, 2004, 2005 and again in 2007. For the 2007 Miss World, it was won by Ms. Zhang Zilin of China.

Photograph of my elder sister taken at Dandonghai Beach, Sanya.

At Sanya, we stayed at a very reasonable budget hotel (Hunfeng Hotel) with a very good location for food, transportation, shopping, etc. The rate @ RMB 90.00 per night (triple-sharing) was unbelieveable cheap. We stayed at Sanya for 2 nights and spent another 2 nights at Haikou at The Civil Aviation Hotel. This hotel was also very conveniently located for shopping, food, tranportation, etc. and reasonable cheap at RMB 240.00 (triple sharing with 3 breakfast). It is more convenient for travelling to and from Haikou Airport as it was the terminal for the airport bus @ RMB 15/person each way.

At Haikou, we visited Wugong Temple, The Tomb of Hai Rui, Haikou Gongyuan, etc.

Photograph of me taken at The Tomb of Hai Rui

Tomb of Hai Rui was situated in the western outskirts of Haikou City, 5 kilometers away. It represented people's esteem towards Hai Rui, an upright and uncorrupted official. It was originally built in 1589 during the Ming Dynasty (1368 -1644) with an area of over 4,000 square meters.

Wugong Temple of The Five Officials Temple was situated approximately 5 kilometers (about 3.1 miles) from Haikou City, and originally constructed during the reign of Emperor Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It was renovated during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Now, it is a place known for its sense of peace, tranquility and beauty.

The Wugong Temple was constructed to commemorate the five famous officials- Li Deyu, Li Gang, Zhao Ding, Li Guang and Hu Quan who were banished to Hainan during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The main hall housed the stone statues of the five prestigious officials. On the inner pillars, there were praised couplets of the five officials. Additionally, a stone tablet that was carved with calligraphy inscriptions of Emperor Huizong, from the Song Dynasty was also displayed.

Travelling to Hainan Island.

The above travel to Hainan Island was via Tigerairways special fare of SGD 7.88/sector. There were three of us, i.e. my elder brother, Heng Wah, my elder sister, Lai Meng & myself. The total all inclusive returned fare worked out to be SGD 172.01 per person or approx. RM 400 ex-Singapore.

Our intention was to visit to visit Sanya especially the impressive 108 Metres Statue of The Goddess of Mercy or Guan Yin. If your are of Buddhism faith, you should not miss this spectacular statue of Guan Yin. SEEING IS BELIEVING. The moment you see the statue from a distance, it looks like you are seeing Guan Yin emerging from the sky (as in a number of Chinese movies). Also, the Sanya City has one of the best beaches in Asia, it was so beautiful that the Miss World Beauty Pagent was held here four times, i.e. 2003, 2004, 2005 & 2007.

During our travel in January 2007, Air Asia has not started flying to Haikou, Hainan yet so we took the best opportunity, the right time and the best pricing to visit Hainan. Now (2008 onwards), Air Asia has daily direct flights to Haikou, Hainan and I strongly recommend you to visit Sanya.

TRIP TO JIANGMEN, KAIPING & SHUNDE - 19TH TO 23RD JULY 2007

This was the fourth consectively year that I took my octogenarian father back to his childhood hometown, Jiangmen, Guangdong. There were six of us on this trip, the others being my elder sister (Lai Meng), my younger brother (Heng Wan), my elder sister-in-law (Doreen Cheong) and her octogenerian mother. Again thank you to Air Asia, all the six returned tickets (LCCT-Macau) were the special "free tickets" offered by Air Asia. We only paid an all inclusive rate of RM 255/person for this trip.

As usual my father would never miss visiting the family ancestral home at Hehou Li - about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. Normally, my octogenarian father walked very slowly but when we were going to the ancestral home, he walked even faster than us (my elder sister, my younger brother & myself) as he was too anxious to see his childhood home. However, this trip, nostalgia stuck him as the neighbours said that the entire area will be demolished "soon" by the local government for a road project. The ancestral house which was more than 100 years old may no longer exist in our next trip (We planned for March 2009). As usual, I took numerous photographs & videos of the WAN family ancestral house.

For this trip, we were welcomed by our distant relatives at Jiangmen who also visited Kuala Lumpur 3 months earlier in April 2007. We visited UNESCO World Heritage Site, i.e. the dialous or fortified watchtowers at Zili Village & Liyuan Garden both at Kaiping. We also travelled to Shunde and visited the famous Qinghui Garden.

Photographs of Dialous at Zili Village, Kaiping

(myself, my elder sister, my Jiangmen niece, my Jiangmen cousin, my younger brother, my sister-in-law and her mum, my father and another Jiangmen relative).

Kaiping Diaolou
The diaolou of Kaiping are fortified multi-storey towers, built by returning Chinese immigrants from America, Canada, Hong Kong and Malaysia. They display a fusion of Chinese and Western decorative forms. The towers were constructed in the 1920s and 1930s, when there were more than 3,000 of these structures. The diaolou served as housing and as protection against forays by bandits (and later the Japanese). Three separate forms can be distinguished: communal towers, residential towers and watch towers. Of the approximately 1,800 diaolou still standing today, 20 of them in the following areas make up the designated site: - Sanmenli Village- Zili Village & the Fang Clan Watch Tower- Majianlong Village Cluster- Jinjiangli Village Tower houses.

An entry fee of RMB 50/person to Zili Village, Tangkou town was charged. Since, these watch towers of dialous were gazetted as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, there have been increasingly local Chinese tourists and foreigners.

The diaolou were used for defence in times of upheaval. They flourished particularly in the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when countless local wars ravaged China – the bloody Taiping rebellion (1851-1864) to cite but one – and during what is known as the Warlord period, when power-hungry military leaders wreaked havoc in the country, between 1916 and 1926.
Double-Happiness and Acanthus leaves.

Their construction was financed by emigrants. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Kaiping was a centre of Chinese emigration. Many of its citizens worked as coolies in Southeast Asian mines and plantations, participated in the California gold rush and railroad construction across the American continent, or opened laundries, restaurants and shops.

Returning home, they introduced the extraordinary composite architecture of the diaolou, which melds, for instance, auspicious Chinese motifs like the Double-Happiness symbol with acanthus leaves or classical colonnades from the west. They also imported cement and steel into the region, which turned out to have a determining impact on this unusual architectural style, with reinforced concrete making cantilevered construction possible and facilitating domes and other rounded forms. This was a great novelty. Incidentally, the expression “upside-down wok” is used in Chinese literature of the time to designate a cupola.

Liyuan Garden, a super garden of overseas Chinese
Liyuan Garden – a bright pearl in the sea of gardens designed by Overseas Chinese, is the one with unique architectural style which can well match tbe Four Famous Gardens in Guangdong. Situated at Tangkou Town, Kaiping City, a noted hometown for overseas Chinese, and covering an area of about 20 mu, Liyuan Garden is a garden villa of the late Mr. Xie Weili, an overseas Chinese resided in the United States. This garden was built in the early 20th century. Based on the Grand View Garden described in the Chinese classic,, a Dream of Red Mansions”, Liyuan takes in much of the Chinese traditional garden architecture and integrate it with the feature of European and American villas of its time, a successful combination of Chinese and the West. It aIso enjoys the reputation of being a Grand View Garden only smaller in size.

Qinghui garden was one of the four famous gardens of Guangdong in Qing Dynasty. It is situated at the side of Qinghui Road, Daliang. It is a provincial preservation of cultural relics .The original owner of the garden was Mr. Huang Shijun, a No. 1 Scholar (the title conferred on one who came first in the highest imperial examination) in Ming Dynasty. Afterward, Mr. Long Yingshi, a Jinshi (the successful candidate in the highest imperial examination) bought the garden, under the aborative constructive of the Long's generations, the structure of the garden was formed.

Later, its total area was enlarged to 22,000 square meters. Inside the garden, the elegant scenery mixed with blue water, green trees, engraved windows, rock hills, small bridges, winding corridors join the pavilions etc. The great sight spots are: Boat Hall, Bixi Thatched Cottage, Clear Riffle Pavilion, Time Saving Study, Bamboo Garden, Guiji Room, Fine Calligraphy Hall, Red Lotus Study, Feilai Peak, Muying Gully and Liuxiang Hall etc. Its reveals the typical features of ancient Chinese courtyard dark green tree leaves cover the boles, the engraving, painting and fancy artworks for decoration are everywhere.

We left Jiangmen for Macau on 22 July 2007 via ferry from Jiangmen Port. Our Jiangmen's relatives who were working for Guangdong CIQ (Customs Immigration & Quarantine) and based at Jiangmen Port sent us off to the ferry and everything were well taken care of. It was a breeze to clear Chinese Immigration at Jiangmen Port unlike Gongbei or Shenzhen where crowds were everywhere and the mad rush for immigration clearance and another better systematic clearance at Macau or Hong Kong.

The journey from Jiangmen Port to Macau via the Si Kiang or West River took approx. 2 hours. The cost of the one-way trip was RMB 60/person. On arrival at Macau Inner Harbour, Immigration clearance was again very orderly and easy. at Macau Inner Harbour. Our octogenarian father and my sister-in-law's mother (another octogenarian) were very pleased with the immigation formalities and I would strongly recommend the ferry trip from Macau to Jiangmen or vice-versa if you are visiting Jiangmen or Wuyi with elderly people.

At Macau, we stay at East Asia Hotel, by walking up a pedestrian bridge nearby; less than 5 minutes walk away from the Inner Harbour. At Macau, we visited the usual places of interest such as Ruins of St. Paul, Senando Square, etc. We left Macau the next day via Air Asia Flight AK 51 at 10.45am.

Posted May 2008 by HK Wan, Klang, Selangor, Malaysia.

Email: hengkei@gmail.com