Haikou海口

Haikou is the capital of Hainan Province — and since the island went into full customs closure operation as a free trade port on Dec 18, 2025, it has become the one gateway almost everyone and everything crossing in or out of Hainan must pass through. The city's name means "mouth of the sea," for the spot where the Nandu River meets the ocean; it became Hainan's capital in 1988, when the island split from Guangdong to form its own province and Special Economic Zone. In the old town, along Zhongshan Road and Deshengsha Road, entire blocks of qilou arcade buildings still stand — a Nanyang architectural style brought home by Hainanese merchants who had emigrated to Southeast Asia, cousins to the qilou of Guangzhou, Shantou and Xiamen but with their own accent. Today's Haikou runs both storylines at once: tourists working through a duty-free shopping list on one side of town, locals fanning themselves over the newspaper in an old laoba teahouse on the other. The free port's "new" and the arcade street's "old" share the same city without either trying to replace the other.

Qilou Arcades & the Nanyang Returnees

Nanyang style meets Hainanese roots

• Zhongshan, Deshengsha and Bo'ai roads hold blocks of early-20th-century qilou arcades, built with money sent home by Hainanese merchants who had made their fortunes in Southeast Asia
• Shops on the ground floor, homes above, and a covered arcade shielding pedestrians from sun and rain — architecture shaped by the tropical climate
• Wugong Ci (Five Officials Memorial Temple) honors five ministers exiled to Hainan across the Tang and Song dynasties, one of the island's oldest cultural landmarks
• A laoba teahouse is a Haikou local's living room — one pot of tea and a plate of pastries can hold a whole morning

Volcanoes & Mangroves

A rare cluster of tropical volcanoes right at a city's edge

• The Shishan volcanic cluster is a Quaternary-era volcanic field with over 40 cones and 30-plus lava tunnels, recognized within the UNESCO Global Geopark network
• Ma'anling crater is an easy hike to the rim, looking down into the volcanic bowl and out over the lava-rock terrain
• Dongzhaigang is China's first national-level mangrove nature reserve (established 1980) — at low tide you can see mangrove forest stretching out with migratory birds overhead
• Holiday Beach and the Century Bridge are the two go-to spots downtown for a sunset

Hainan's Four Famous Dishes & Old Haikou Flavors

If you've had Hainanese chicken rice in Singapore, this is where it started

• Wenchang chicken, Jiaji duck, Dongshan goat and Hele crab make up Hainan's "Four Famous Dishes," all findable in Haikou restaurants
• The Hainanese chicken rice beloved across Singapore and Malaysia traces straight back to the poached, white-cut chicken recipe Hainanese emigrants carried south
• Hainan-style rice noodles (haifen) are Haikou's breakfast staple — sour, savory, topped with crushed peanuts and dried shrimp, and nothing like Cantonese rice noodles
• Qingbuliang, a coconut-milk dessert soup with taro, red beans and mung beans among other toppings, is sold on nearly every old-town street

Everyday Life

The free port's new pace and the arcade street's old rhythm, running side by side

• Full customs closure operation for the Hainan Free Trade Port formally began Dec 18, 2025 — as the capital and main port city, Haikou is first in line to work through the new procedures
• Winter (Nov–Mar) brings a wave of "snowbird" retirees from northern China, so hotels and short-term rentals get noticeably tighter
• Local life runs at an unhurried pace; English concentrates at the airport, duty-free malls and star hotels — ordinary restaurants mostly run on pointing and translation apps
• Coworking and digital-nomad infrastructure is still early-stage, no denser than nearby Sanya