Sanya, an island province in Hainan, is fast earning a reputation as China’s Florida for its sunny weather, beaches, and groves of palm trees. It attracts a steady stream of tourists and retirees, especially visitors coming from cold regions, looking for a warmer escape.
“At home in Harbin, it (can be) -30 degrees Celsius, it’s unbearable. But here the climate is perfect,” said a 71-year-old pensioner from Heilongjiang Province, located close to the Siberian border. To escape the frigid winter temperatures of Harbin, Wang and her husband have been visiting Sanya for the past eight years.
Qi Ningxia, another 60-year-old native of Heilongjiang Province who suffers from asthma, also frequents Sanya for its warmer weather.
“Here, we can breath and that warmth is better for our health,” Qi shared with The Straits Times.
Sanya receives an average of 600,000 to 700,000 Chinese retirees every winter, a number almost double Sanya’s local population, said Huang Cheng, a sociologist at Sanya University. Majority of the retirees hail from the provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Jilin, located in northeastern China.
People started to vacation in Sanya in 2000, when people from the aforementioned provinces started to invest in residential and commercial real estate in the island. Some of them have permanently moved to Sanya and opened businesses, which enticed family and friends to relocate.
To cater to Sanya’s local and visiting population of Chinese retirees, various recreational facilities have popped up, such as mahjong tables and recreational centers offering ping-pong, calligraphy, and even computer science classes.
Yacht marinas, luxury residences and resorts, golf courses, and a Club Med have also been built in Sanya to attract more foreign and domestic tourists. It’s a far cry from the sleepy fishing village Sanya used to be. Hainan Island itself has transformed from an outpost where criminals and disgraced scholars were sent to be exiled into a vacationer’s dream destination.
The influx of luxury development in Sanya, however, does not fit the lifestyle Chinese retirees from northeastern China want. More tourists make food prices costly. Real estate has also become expensive as demand for Sanya real estate surge.
All of these factors put pressure on Chinese retirees, with one-third of the population composed of former mine, steel, and petroleum workers. Most of them rely on monthly incomes of 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, while a quarter receive less.