After spending time in the bitter cold of China’s northernmost province, how does one recover?  By spending time in the tropical warmth of China’s southernmost province, Hainan Island, at the resorts near the small city of Sanya.  Sharing a latitude with Jamaica and the Virgin Islands, Sanya stays warm year round, as I found out this February week before Chinese New Year.  In preparation for the holiday, thousands of huge red lanterns were being hung among the palms lining the streets of the city and its resorts.

Sanya calls itself “the Hawaii of the Orient,” and while that claim falls well short of reality, the city does boast some very nice beaches - including this one along nearby Yalong Bay, where most of the area’s best resorts are located.  In the early 1990’s Hainan Island was an economic hotspot expected to develop into a major industrial center, but the boom went bust after a few years of rampant speculation.  Property development is now in vogue, with many new apartments and resorts under construction and many old resorts under renovation.

Mind your head!  Groves of coconut palms seem to grow everywhere around Sanya.  Shopowners trim the husks of fallen coconuts with huge knifes and stick a straw in the top to serve fresh juice.  In the previous photograph, a waiter can be seen carrying two coconut drinks to waiting customers on the beach.

Morning view from a Yalong Bay resort out to the South China Sea.  Practically empty this week before Chinese New Year, the resorts would soon fill to record capacity - and the room rates would skyrocket to record levels - because the Asian tsunami five weeks earlier had forced many holiday tourists to move their vacations to unaffected resort areas like Sanya.

Attractions away from the beaches of Yalong Bay tend to be fairly minor - a seashell museum here, a cultured pearl factory there - but Butterfly Valley is certainly worth a couple of hours early on a cloudy morning.  A large tropical garden shrouded in aviary nets, Butterfly Valley contains dozens of butterfly species - though only a handful seem to appear at one time.  A bit of patience allowed me to get this photograph.

Another butterfly of the same species.  The blossoms in this photograph are noticeably artificial; for the sake of visitors, groundskeepers place several groups of artificial flowers along the pathways and spray them regularly with a liquid that attracts the butterflies.

A real flower - a hibiscus - at Butterfly Valley, quite an impressive sight for early February.  Even at this time of year, tropical gardens get rather steamy by noon, and the butterflies seem to go into hiding.

Another attraction about half an hour’s drive east of Yalong Bay is Monkey Island, which is just that - an island full of monkeys.  The coastal town of Xincun serves as its gateway; the tram ride from the town over to the island reveals what appears to be an entire village built in the shallow water between the two.  This view from the tram shows one small part of a huge grid of docks spread across the water.

Welcome to Monkey Island!  Despite the threatening look I received here (I had gotten too close with my camera), these monkeys - rhesus macaque monkeys, from what I’ve read - are quite tame and friendly.  About a thousand of them roam freely throughout this tourist park and research center; and since it’s okay for guests to feed them, they tend to hang around people.

This may look like a performance of the opening scene from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but actually, a park worker had just thrown food to a nearby group of monkeys.  Some of the monkeys do perform, however; a number of circus-style shows are held throughout the park.

A baby monkey on a rooftop checks out the scene below.

Break time for the park workers - all of them - and certainly one of my favorite photographs from this trip.  The hats worn here are not just part of a costume, but are commonly worn throughout the region by farmers and laborers - serving as a reminder that Hainan Island lies east across the Gulf of Tonkin from Vietnam.