Lingshui — the county town

Why a town without sights

Most travellers in China see only two things: big cities and tourist spots. Most people's lives happen in between, in county towns like this one. Lingshui, officially the town of Yelin, is the seat of the Li Autonomous County — with a market, schools, offices, scooters, food stalls and phone shops.

Spend a morning here and you see what normal everyday life on Hainan looks like. Nobody sells you a tour, nobody waits for tourists, hardly anyone speaks English. That's unfamiliar — and exactly what makes this day special.

Fourteen hundred years as a county town

Lingshui is old. The county was founded in 610, under the Sui dynasty, making it one of the island's oldest administrative units. It takes its name from a river. A legend tells of a well whose water turned clear or cloudy depending on how good the heart of the person looking in was.

The present town grew up in the Ming era on the site of a military post. Since 1987 Lingshui has been a Li autonomous county: of around 380,000 inhabitants, more than half belong to this people. So on the street you hear three quite different languages — Hainanese, the Li language and, from Xincun, the Cantonese-sounding Tanka.

The merchants' house

One building is still worth the detour: the guild hall of the merchants from Qiongshan, built in 1921 on Zhongshan Road. Traders from the north of the island built themselves a meeting place here, with three courtyards one behind the other, wood carvings and a façade that mixes Chinese building styles with European arches and columns.

It's the same style you'll see again later in the arcade houses of Haikou's old town. The money and the forms came the same way: through trade with Southeast Asia.

A six-month revolution

In December 1927 Li and Han peasants attacked the town, succeeding after several attempts. The first county-level Soviet government on Hainan was then proclaimed in the guild hall, with a striking number of Li among its members. It lasted only about half a year before government troops crushed it.

Today the building is a national monument and houses the county museum. The exhibition tells the story from the Party's perspective, as the beginning of a long road. You can also read it differently: as the story of a poor region where people were looking for a way out.

The sour noodles of Lingshui

The real reason to come to Lingshui is on every second shop sign: Lingshui suanfen, the sour noodles. According to tradition they were invented at the end of the Qing era in the village of Anma on the edge of town, and for a long time vendors carried them through the lanes on shoulder poles.

Thin rice noodles go into the bowl, topped with a dozen ingredients: dried squid, fish cakes, fried little fish, strips of beef, peanuts and herbs — and, as the luxury version, dried sand worms, a coastal delicacy. Then comes a vinegar sauce and the region's yellow lantern chilli, one of the hottest chillies in China. It's usually eaten without broth, with everything mixed in the bowl.

A record and a title

The town is proud of its noodles. In 2012 more than ten thousand people ate sour noodles here at the same time, which was entered as a record. In 2016 Lingshui received the official title “Home of China's Sour Noodles”, and the preparation is on the province's list of intangible cultural heritage.

A bowl usually costs ten to twenty yuan in the small shops. You can spot the best ones by the plastic stools on the pavement and the queue at lunchtime.

How to approach the day

Go to the market in the morning while the stalls are full: fruit, fish, herbs, dried seafood. At lunchtime a bowl of sour noodles, ordered at the counter. Showing the Chinese name on your phone is quite enough. Then the guild hall, if it's open.

The afternoon stays free, ideally for the hotel beach at Xiangshui Bay and the sunset. If you're moving on by train: Lingshui has a station on the east-coast high-speed line; Sanya is about thirty minutes away.