Early in the morning I found the fishing boats came in close to shore and tourists from the high rise hotels flocked to buy fish – about an hour later they chugged off to the next door bay, presumably to do the same thing.

Yalong Bay

After our exciting success yesterday with Solanum nienkui, Mr. Huang decided we needed to see the tropical rainforest resort where he had provided botanical help, labelling trees and providing environmental impact support. It is great to see trees in a place like this labelled with names (scientific and Chinese), distribution and uses – really possible to learn something.

Tree label

It was truly a wonder and could only be in China – a luxury hotel with cabins (“camping”!!) set in lovely forest, all accessible and ready to host hundreds of guests. One of the (many) swimming pools just dropped off into nowhere – stunning. I did find a solanum - Solanum procumbens, a spiny vine I had only seen once before, so I was pleased!

We then returned to Sanya to stock up on fruit from the local open air fruit market before our return to Beijing in the evening – what a place! Mangoes from tiny to huge, jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus, related to the breadfruit of Captain Bligh fame) [jackfruit] – and bedlam from bargaining, card playing and general motorcycle plus human traffic.

Fruit seller

Many of the vendors were local people from mountain villages – their lips and teeth were stained red from chewing what is often called “betel nut”. The nut is the area but, from the palm Areca catechu, and it is sold together with betel leaves – the leaves of the black pepper (Piper nigrum). The nuts are a mild stimulant with vasoconstricting properties, causing a hot sensation and heightened alertness. The red staining is from the coloured seed inside the palm fruit. The nut is important (in conjunction with the pepper leaves) in both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic medicine and is widely used in Southeast Asia.

Betel nuts

At 8pm we took off for Beijing, laden with fruits, and arrived nearly 5 hours later – China is a huge country, and we even flew the short axis! The shock was considerable, coming to 0 degrees centigrade from 39 a few hours before – snow on the ground and ponds frozen over. Thank goodness the herbarium is heated!