Haikou: A Provincial Capital That Grew Out of a Port

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On December 9, 2025, the plane landed at Haikou Meilan Airport. A friend picked me up, and I stayed at a friend's home. This was the first stop of the Hainan self-driving trip — and the starting point of the whole route.

As it happens, December 9 was also the 99th anniversary of Haikou becoming a city — on December 9, 1926, Haikou split off from Qiongshan County and was formally established as a city. A city's birthday falling on the first day of a trip — not a bad opening.

1. Its fate is written in its name

Haikou was known in ancient times as Baisha Jin and Haikou Pu, and its nickname is "Coconut City." The name itself is geography: "Haikou" means the mouth of the Nandu River where it meets the sea. The city grew where river and sea meet — a port in its very bones.

In the Tang dynasty, Baisha Jin was set up here — an ancient ferry post outside Qiongzhou city, a port for crossing between Qiongzhou and Leizhou and for trade. By the Southern Song, the name "Haikou Pu" gradually replaced Baisha Jin and became Hainan's main port for sea crossings and the import and export of goods. In 1395 (the 27th year of Hongwu in the Ming dynasty), walls began to be built here. In 1684 (the 23rd year of Kangxi in the Qing dynasty), the sea ban was lifted and Haikou became Hainan's transport hub and foreign trade center. After the Treaty of Tianjin was signed in 1858, Haikou opened as a treaty port, and in 1876 the Qiongzhou Customs was established, giving foreign trade its formal shape. For more than a century after that, Haikou Port remained Hainan's largest port, with over half of the island's trade passing through it.

On April 13, 1988, Hainan became a province and Haikou its capital. From a ferry crossing to a provincial capital, every step Haikou took was on the two characters "hai" (sea) and "kou" (mouth): where river meets sea is where people and goods flow; where they flow, a city grows.

2. Qilou Old Street: a row of houses that tell stories

Arriving in Haikou, I went to Qilou Old Street on the first day. The old street clusters around Deshengsha Road, Zhongshan Road, Bo'ai Road, Xinhua Road, Jiefang Road, and Changdi Road — more than 600 qilou buildings of three or four stories, 4.4 km in total. In 2009 it was named one of the first ten "Famous Historical and Cultural Streets of China" — the largest and best-preserved qilou cluster in the country.

What is a qilou? Simply put, the building "rides" on a walkway: the ground floor facing the street is set back, leaving a wide corridor for pedestrians, while the second and third floors above extend out over the corridor. It shelters you from rain, shades you from sun, and the corridor can hold shops and goods. The form first appeared in the late 1840s, originating in Greek colonnaded architecture; it reached Lingnan and was then adapted to Hainan's typhoon-prone climate — the wind vents in the parapet walls are what set Haikou's qilou apart from those in Guangzhou and Xiamen.

Qilou follow a "three-part" structure: the lower part is the corridor, the middle part carries the old shop signs and carved window lintels, and the upper part has the gable ornaments and parapet walls. Many houses look narrow from the street but run deep inside — locals call them "long-tube houses," a fusion of northern Hainan homes and Southeast Asian style.

The most famous batch of qilou on the old street was funded by overseas Chinese between 1924 and 1939, with Zhongshan Road at its core. Most of these houses were built by returned overseas Chinese. A century ago, large numbers of Qiongzhou people left from the docks here to seek a living in Southeast Asia, and after making their way abroad they returned home, bringing Southeast Asian architectural styles back with them. A boarding song from the docks went: "Up to Nantang, down to Nanyang — leave wife and children, bid farewell to father and mother." A journey of a thousand miles, full of hardship. Qilou Old Street is the trace that history left on the ground.

3. Gateway and melting pot

Haikou's character is half gateway, half melting pot.

As a gateway, it is Hainan's hub for contact with the outside world: ancient ferry, trading port, customs house, provincial capital — most of Hainan's dealings with the outside pass through here. As a melting pot, it fused the local culture of northern Hainan with the Southeast Asian flavor brought back from overseas — and the qilou are the most direct expression of that fusion: a Chinese courtyard layout, Western facade decoration, and Southeast Asian corridor craft, three things put together on one building, and somehow harmonious.

Walking the old street, look for these details: the carved window lintels above the corridors, the gable ornaments on the rooftops, the wind vents at the corners, and the old shop signs around Zhongshan Road. The houses themselves are historical records — no need to enter a museum; one walk along the street shows you where Haikou came from.

4. One last note

Haikou is where this island loop began. Arrived December 9, picked up by a friend, stayed at a friend's home, spent the afternoon at Qilou Old Street and Wanluyuan Park, and watched the sunset at Haikou Bay in the evening. No rushing — the first day was settling in and wandering. For a port city, the best way to open it is to walk slowly.

Next stop: south along the east coast, to Shenzhou Peninsula in Wanning.

🎬 Video version: the Qilou Old Street culture video is live

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