At this point I should probably explain where Becca was for her to be ‘back’ in this blog entry. Cast your mind back to November, when the Kuitun Trio left for Heilongjiang. Shortly after settling in, their visa troubles had returned and they’d had to retreat to Hong Kong to reapply. After a few weeks it emerged they’d have to apply from the UK.

We met Becca in Guangzhou, fresh off a twenty-hour train from Beijing (and flight from London before that). Our hostel was called Lazy Gaga (gaga meaning house in Cantonese), before going to Pizza Hut, whose menu was strangely lacking in actual pizza. Becca presented me with a block of Dairy Milk which I devoured in thirty minutes.

Over the next few days, a sense of lethargy pervaded our room. We visited a few parks and took photos of Canton Tower (which turned out to be a modern skyscraper), as well as contemplating a game of city-wide hide-and-seek, but reflecting that it would be better with more players. On New Year’s Eve we saw Guangzhou’s Botanical Gardens and enjoyed a spot of sunbathing too. The evening itself was spent watching films; we went to investigate a dumpling party in the hostel lobby but decided it was, uh, missable, and got Xinjiang noodles from a shop just down the road instead (incidentally one of the only places open on New Year’s Eve).

As Calum and I had arrived in Guangzhou we saw a BBC news article about ‘100,000-person-long queues at Guangzhou station’. For this reason we got to the station a few hours in advance (following a brief but pleasant visit to Panyu square). Fortunately, the few days since the report had been enough for them to clear the backlog, but the remnants of the crowds were still apparent in the multiple (deserted) security checks and winding barriers across the entrance square. Getting in can’t have taken us more than 15 minutes, so the three of us reached an almost deserted waiting room with the realisation that we now had nearly two hours to kill. Ah well. Better safe than sorry.

The train was initially full, but as subsequent stations passed and no-one got on, passengers gradually filtered off into those carriages assigned for later stops (which is generally how tickets are organised in China; it meant that despite booking our tickets separately, we were all in the same place on the train). Within a couple of hours we had an entire booth to just the three of us (and enough room to stretch out). For Calum and I, this was the first overnight hard seat of the journey (Becca had braved one from Beijing to Guangzhou). Compared to previous experiences (Karamay to Ürümqi for Christmas, for example), it was relatively painless (if also sleepless), with the result that I was only a little bit tetchy as we got off the train in Haikou. Fun fact – Haikou is too far from the mainland for a bridge, so the daily train onto the island has to be loaded onto a ferry.

Hainan, the island province, instantly felt different from the rest of China. Whether it was the palm trees, abundance of bikes (and complete disregard for traffic laws) or just sleep-deprivation, I’m not sure. We got an uncomfortable bus (packed in like sardines) then walked the rest of the way to the Haikou Banana Youth Hostel. Sleep followed not long after. During our stay we saw a bit of Haikou: narrow roads lined with crumbling colonial buildings (shutters and colonnades), having to duck to the side of the path for electric scooters (despite being next to a designated cycle lane), and learning not to jump every time firecrackers were set off nearby, which sound remarkably like gunfire.

—TJC

Featured image: Calum, Becca and I enjoying the Sun from Yalong Bay, on Hainan.