Most visitors to Hainan know about coconut water, but Hainan's specialty beverages go far beyond that. Shanlan rice wine is the "champagne" of the Li ethnic people — brewed from the upland rice "Shanlan Mi" grown in the central mountains of Hainan, it is sweet with a subtle kick, uncorked only during major festivals or when honored guests arrive. Old-salt lemonade is Hainan's recent summer sensation — coarse salt aged for over fifty years combined with locally grown green lemons creates a drink where layers of salty, sour, and sweet dance across the tongue. And the laoba tea shop is Hainan's most everyday social drinking space — the British-style afternoon tea culture brought back by overseas Chinese returning from Southeast Asia took root on the island and evolved into the unique "tea drip" culture — Hainan-style condensed milk tea.
The diversity of Hainan's beverages is a liquid expression of the island's multi-layered cultural sedimentation. Coconut water is the most ancient — Hainan's history of coconut cultivation stretches back over two thousand years, and the saying "Half of Hainan's coconuts come from Wenchang, and half of Wenchang's coconuts come from Dongjiao" speaks to the fame of the Dongjiao coconut groves. Shanlan rice wine represents the brewing wisdom of Hainan's inland Li people — Biang (the Li language pronunciation of Shanlan rice) carries the millennia-old agricultural traditions of the ethnic minorities in central Hainan. The emergence of laoba tea, by contrast, is a modern phenomenon — at the end of the nineteenth century, overseas Chinese who had sojourned in Southeast Asia brought British afternoon tea culture back to Hainan, where it merged with local marketplace culture to form the laoba tea shops now found across the island. Finishing one cup and refilling it with hot water is called "tea two," another refill is "tea three," and so on — the passage of time is thus recorded in a pot of tea that is continuously replenished.
Behind these beverages, I discern a distinctly Hainanese sense of ease. In a laoba tea shop, one can sit from morning until afternoon — a pot of tea, a few baskets of dim sum, chatting and gossiping. There is none of the refined anxiety of Starbucks here, only slow time under the coconut trees. When Su Shi lived in Hainan, he wrote, "Do not think of yourself as being at the edge of the world ten thousand miles away; by the stream there is still the wind of the Rain Dance Platform" — even when exiled to what was then considered the ends of the earth, he could still find life's pleasures. Today's Hainan beverage culture is, in essence, a continuation of this attitude of crafting subtle, pleasurable joy in the face of adversity. Whether it is a glass of old-salt lemonade or a pot of tea refilled eight times, each is a contemporary practice of the ancient philosophy of "taking life slowly."
Takeaway: From the sweet clarity of coconut water to the fiery warmth of Shanlan wine, from the salty-sour notes of old-salt lemonade to the lingering finish of laoba tea, Hainan's beverage map is a condensed portrait of island civilization. Next time you visit Hainan, don't forget to begin your acquaintance with the island through its drinks.← What to Drink in Hainan: A Taste Journey from Coconut Water, Shanlan Rice Wine to Laoba Tea
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