Nature’s exquisite craftsmanship has ‘sketched’ numerous beautiful bays along the eastern coastline of Sanya City, with Yalong Bay and Haitang Bay being the most renowned. Both bays are characterized by sandy coastlines, featuring wide beaches, white sands, and fine waves, making them ideal for the development of coastal tourism. In 1992, Yalong Bay became one of China’s first national-level tourism resorts and officially began development. The fine sand, azure sea, and comfortable climate have made Yalong Bay the earliest ‘hot’ bay in the country, earning the accolade of ‘The Best Bay in the World’. In recent years, Yalong Bay tourism has accelerated its transformation and upgrading, becoming a golden business card for Hainan’s coastal tourism.
Naturally Beautiful
Mountains and Sea Echoing, Flat Shores and White Sands
Upon entering the Yalong Bay National Tourism Resort, the approximately 8-kilometer coastline is shaded by swaying coconut palms, home to numerous exotic flowers, rare plants, and pristine tropical vegetation. Various distinctive resort hotels are scattered orderly, like a string of bright pearls, adorning the bay in a dazzling manner.
Yalong Bay is backed by mountains and faces the South China Sea, with the bay taking on a crescent shape overall. The integration of land and water, mountains and sea, has created its unique charm. Experts have indicated that the formation of such sandy coastlines is related to the transportation of mountainous or plain sediments into the sea and the movement of seawater towards the shore.
Yalong Bay boasts the ‘Five Good Aspects’: the beach is excellent, with clean and delicate sand that feels very comfortable to walk on; the seawater quality is high, clear and transparent, allowing for year-round swimming; the beach is good, with a wide and gently sloping entry into the water, making it suitable for swimming; the sea surface colors are beautiful, with the sea surface displaying seven colors on sunny days, transitioning from light green to deep blue, creating a sense of depth; the surrounding environment of the sea area is good, surrounded by green mountains on three sides, gathering the beauty of green mountains, azure sea, and blue sky. These factors combined make Yalong Bay’s tourism resources uniquely blessed.
Not only is the scenery beautiful, but in recent years, the tourism products in Yalong Bay have become increasingly diverse, further enriching the visitor experience. Visitors can experience speedboats, jet skis, and other activities in Yalong Bay, enjoying the thrill of marine sports; they can also go diving in Yalong Bay to witness the vibrant underwater world; or they can bungee jump from the 52-meter high platform at the Yalong Bay bungee jumping base to experience what it feels like to ‘free fall’.
After a day of fun, as night falls, you can stroll on the beach in your slippers, enjoying the gentle sea breeze, quietly observing the moonlight pouring onto the sea surface, experiencing the ‘fresh breeze of the sea and the bright moon of the mountains’ as described by Su Shi.
A Brilliant Start
From a Small Fishing Village to a Resort
Looking at the beautiful scene of Yalong Bay today and comparing it with the old photos taken in the early 1990s, the thoughts of Sanya citizen Sun Qing come to mind, ‘It’s really hard to imagine that in just a few decades, Yalong Bay has rapidly developed into a benchmark for coastal tourism.’
In the photos, cacti grow wildly along the coast of Yalong Bay, several women wearing straw hats carrying bamboo baskets are resting under the coconut trees, and not far away, a tricycle is driving with dust. ‘At that time, Yalong Bay was a remote small fishing village, and the local villagers lived by fishing and farming,’ said Sun Qing.
In 1992, Yalong Bay, with its beautiful scenery, welcomed opportunities. At that time, the leadership of Sanya was committed to promoting the construction of an international tropical coastal tourism city, proposing to take tourism as the central industry to drive the economic takeoff of Sanya. Yalong Bay is rich in tourism resources and has the advantage of developing the tourism industry. In October 1992, after efforts from all sides, the Yalong Bay National Tourism Resort was approved by the State Council and became one of the first batch of national-level tourism resorts in China.
For a while, Yalong Bay welcomed many domestic and foreign planning and design, construction, and tourism development teams, and the quiet small fishing village began to become popular. The Sanya Municipal People’s Government authorized the Sanya Yalong Bay Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yalong Bay Development Company) to ‘unify development, planning, land expropriation, investment attraction, and construction’ of the Yalong Bay National Tourism Resort.
From 1995 to 1997, the Yalong Bay Development Company successIndustry Benchmark
Leading the Trend in Tourism Development
Yalong Bay was originally called Langya Bay, later called Yalong Bay, and was once an unknown deserted bay. It is said that ‘Langya Bay’ comes from the local Li dialect, related to the sand of the bay. Lang and Ya mean white jade, white, describing the sand as white as jade. Because the bay is crescent-shaped, it was later called ‘Yalong Bay’. In the 1990s, after the tourism development of Yalong Bay, it became a well-known tropical coastal tourism resort in the country.
Yalong Bay has clear water, white sand, strange rocks, and secluded caves, integrating modern tourism elements such as ocean, beach, air, sunshine, and greenery. The bay has a tropical maritime climate, with a mild climate, brilliant sunshine, and a year-round summer without winter. The coastline is gentle and beautiful, like a crescent moon falling into the world. The mountains on the north side of the coast are stacked, the forest is lush and green, the cliffs are steep, the rocks are scattered, the stone caves are winding, and the background is magnificent. The bay is backed by mountains and faces the South China Sea, with a smooth sea surface like a mirror, and the seawater is clear to the bottom. When the weather is good, fish and corals 9 meters deep underwater can also be seen clearly.
The development and growth of Yalong Bay directly enhanced the influence of Sanya tourism.
In the Yalong Bay National Tourism Resort, high-end hotels with distinctive characteristics attract tourists from home and abroad to stay. The hotel cluster in this area has become an important tourism service facility.
The scene of the opening of the Sanya Kai Lai Resort Hotel on August 22, 1996, is still imprinted in many people’s minds. The hotel was China’s first five-star resort hotel, which opened the curtain for the construction of high-end resort hotels in China, and Yalong Bay also transformed into a leisure resort bay.
It is understood that at that time, many hotels in Hainan were still business-oriented, and few international brands were settled in. Kai Lai Resort Hotel boldly innovated, integrating the natural environment with the indoor environment, allowing tourists to enjoy their vacation time. ‘The lobby of Kai Lai Resort Hotel has no air conditioning, it is an open environment, employees wear casual island clothes, and the hotel has a swimming pool area, which at the time overturned many people’s understanding of hotels,’ recalled Liu Kaiqiang, who has been working in the hotel industry for many years.
In 1996, for Yalong Bay, it was a milestone year. In addition to the opening of Kai Lai Resort Hotel, the ‘China Vacation Leisure Tourism’ opening ceremony hosted by the National Tourism Administration was held at the Yalong Bay Central Square, and the national vacation tourism officially kicked off, marking a new stage in Sanya tourism.
In recent years, international well-known hotels such as Marriott and Hilton have successively settled in Yalong Bay. The yacht, exhibition, wedding, and homestay tourism formats in Yalong Bay have developed rapidly, promoting the transformation and upgrading of Sanya tourism. For example, adjacent to the Yalong Bay Tropical Paradise Forest Park, the Bo Hou Village in Sanya City’s Jiyang District, has leveraged its locational advantage and has been running homestays and developing tourism-related industries since 2017. In just a few years, there are about 50 homestays open and under construction in Bo Hou Village, with a total of thousands of rooms, making the village a typical representative of the development of the homestay economy in the province.
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