Tiger Tales

Tree's Company

Unleash your inner Peter Pan by spending a weekend hanging out at Sanya’s only treehouse hotel in a Buddhist theme park. Tim Wilson reports from this Chinese wonderland

Journeys, like stories, are always about something. This journey is about rediscovery. The Nanshan Buddhism Cultural Tourism Zone, on tropical Hainan Island, is known for its giant statue of Guanyin, its chamber of golden Buddhas and three amazing treehouses. The treehouses loom like sculptures in a tamarind forest, at the top of a steep sand dune that runs down to a pristine beach.

When evening arrives, floodlights make a cathedral of light in the forest clearing, illuminating the treehouses, the giant swing and the winding wooden walkways. Beyond these, in the looming darkness, we hear furtive rustles in the jungle, sounds from a world that does not belong to us.

I am staying here with friends – an Italian-American family with children aged six and nine. Theirs is the Guanyin View Treehouse, a four-storey treehouse with beds for four, showers, a flush toilet, and a view over the sea towards the three-faced statue of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy. The cost is CNY 780 (S$159/A$123) per night.

Mine is the Loft Above the Bar Treehouse, a low-ceilinged loft room with a surprisingly comfortable bed and a cool breeze blowing through the canopy of trees. Below me is the communal table where we talk, drink, play charades and have our evening meal. This one costs CNY580 (S$118/ A$91) per night.

Across a bridge that hangs between the trees is the remaining treehouse, the three-storey Big Beach in the Sky, a magically shambolic creation of winding stairways and crawl-in bedrooms that, in the ten years since these treehouses were built, has become one of the most photographed icons in the treehouse world. This one has bed space for up to six and costs CNY980 (S$200/A$154) per night.

Staying in the treehouses is a magical, Peter Pan-like experience. Time stands still as children play and adults access their inner child. We take turns on the swing before making it an early night and I wake in the wee hours to see the moon suspended through the trees like a half-droplet of milk on a glass. I wake again at the crack of dawn as the children, startled by a squirrel scratching on the roof of their treehouse, get back down to the important business of taking turns on the giant swing.

The treehouses are part of the Nanshan Leisure Villas, a rambling low-rise hotel within the Nanshan Buddhism Cultural Tourism Zone. Here, if the lack of creature comforts at the treehouses becomes too much, there is always the option of moving to a hotel room, costing around CNY840 (S$132/A$171) per night. However, one of the main advantages of staying in either the treehouses or in a room at the Nanshan Leisure Villas is that there is no need to pay the CNY150 (S$31/A$24) entry fee to the Buddhist theme park. The other advantage is that staying here gives you the chance to visit the park in the early morning, before the crowds arrive.

By 8am, we are settled in a golf cart, making the rounds of the Guanyin statue, the golden, many-handed Buddha and the temple itself. In that strange Chinese blurring of the real and the reinvented, this temple, although built specifically for the park, is now one of the best funded and most active Buddhist temples in southern China. We watch as a monk repeatedly prostrates himself in the sun. This may be a theme park but the devotion is genuine, as are the calluses palpable on the soles of his feet. As the crowds start to form, Ke Min, our Nanshan Villas host, guides our golf cart deftly back to the sanctuary of the treehouses for more turns on the swing.

The treehouses are the brainchild of Hawaiian resident David Greenberg, an architect and urban planner and an early devotee of the ecotourism movement who had his epiphany in 1972 when he saw treehouses in Hawaii built by hippies. “They were almost like kinetic sculptures in the trees where people lived,” he says. “These were hippies that didn’t even have any clothes. It was just inspiring. It was this utopia. It was so much based in nature and so perfect and a lot of fun.”

David, an expansive character who approaches urban design as a medium to provoke thought and improve lives, sees treehouses as more than an amusement. “Treehouses are important”, he says.

Part of the grand purpose of David’s work as an urban planner and treehouse and eco-resort designer is to reunite extended families and preserve and propagate traditional cultures and lifestyles. “If just one percent of people start visiting little eco-tourist resorts here in rural China and actually are affected by the beauty of nature and by the people, they won’t just go back with a tan but with a feeling that will change the world,” he says.

Although there is substantial interest in ecotourism in Hainan, as yet few projects have come to fruition. The Yanoda Rainforest Cultural Tourism Zone, a popular park that features pools, waterfalls and decked walkways through the jungle, is partly a victim of its own success. The park is heavily geared to coach tours, right down to the ticket turnstiles and buffet lunch.

Since Hainan is predominantly rainforest, one alternative for eco-travellers is to take a more exclusive tour into the wilds. I recently went on a one-day cycling and hiking tour with adventure company Unreal Asia that took me inland from Sanya to the hot spring resorts at Baoting and up Seven Fairies Mountain (Qixianling).

The tour, costing US$110 (S$22/A$17) per person, took us past villages, honey farms, banana plantations and on up the mountain. Setting aside our bicycles, we heard little more than the sounds of a bubbling stream and our breathing as we made our way up the mountain steps. Ah, the sound of silence.

FIND IT:

* Treehouses at Nanshan Leisure Villas, tel: +86 (0)898 8883 7665, chinesetreehouse@yahoo.com  

* Nanshan Leisure Villas, tel: +86 (0)898 8883 7665; room rates start at CNY840 (S$172/A$131) for a standard room, CNY2,500 (S$509/ A$393) for a villa  

* Nanshan Buddhism Cultural Tourism Zone, www.nanshan. com/en  

* Yanoda Rainforest Cultural Tourism Zone, free buses run daily to the zone from around Sanya; entry fee is CNY170 (S$35/A$27)  

* Unreal Asia Cycling Tours runs tours to various sites, departing from either Haikou or Sanya. Destinations include Seven Fairies Mountain and Five Finger Mountain. tel: +86 (0)138 7679 8021, www.unrealasia.com